mantras through two chiastic statements: ‘The first is simply to note that [hard-copy/print] books are often far more ephemeral than we often assume. Bindings give way and pages are lost . . . Second, and by contrast, bits and the texts created with them can be far more durable than we think.’36 Fitzpatrick explicitly notes that she does not by this ‘mean that we can be cavalier about their preservation’,37 which is crucial for continued access, but that it is a red herring to believe that it is impossible or that such mechanisms do not exist. This is not to say that such systems are not complex, as Donald J. Waters notes, but rather to point out that the digital revolution has been long anticipated and efforts are already fairly advanced.38 For instance, the CLOCKSS, LOCKSS and Portico systems are all digital preservation systems that are capable of preserving open-access books as they currently stand by distributing copies of the same book to hundreds of locations worldwide. Of course, if one really wished to push this, one could arrive at the logical conclusion that we depend on electricity for any kind of digital preservation and imagine a situation where such a resource is no longer available. In that eventuality, however, the systems of environmental control that preserve our print works would also fail.
The second piece of interesting material published to-date by the OAPEN-UK project is their ‘humanities and social science researchers survey’ results. Running from March to May 2012, this survey solicited 690 usable results from a self-selecting respondent group (meaning that the results may be skewed towards those with preconceived ideas on the subject). Interestingly, the largest group of respondents was Ph.D. candidates, perhaps showing that an upcoming generation of scholars have been more aware of these issues for longer than those already in academic employment (or simply that the reward incentives of Amazon vouchers were more keenly sought by this group!).
Of the respondents, 53.8% classed themselves as ‘aware’ of OA, against 38.7% who said they were ‘familiar’ and 7.2% who had ‘never heard’ of open access. Interestingly, given that a large number of publishers are commercial and shareholder-driven entities, only 20% of researcher respondents felt that it was acceptable for publishers to make a profit and to do with this what they wished, as opposed to supporting the discipline and/or future publication.39
