Research4Life and CLOCKSS partner to link access with preservation
CLOCKSS is now extending its preservation service to the Research4Life Connector countries, with work already underway in the initial selected countries.
Through the new partnership, Research4Life and CLOCKSS are linking access with preservation to support equity in research. Research4Life helps reduce barriers to information access for institutions in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), while CLOCKSS secures published research from these countries as part of the permanent scholarly record.
Together, the partners are aiming to enable researchers to access international literature and ensure that authors’ work remains visible, accessible, and preserved for the long term. This collaborative approach strengthens local research ecosystems and promotes sustainable access to vital scholarly content across regions.
Equitable access to, and creation of, knowledge are cornerstones of global development, yet they remain a challenge in many LMICs. Research4Life has helped reshape access to research in LMICs, providing institutions in more than 125 countries with free or low-cost access to high-quality academic and professional resources. By making essential research in health, agriculture, environment, law, and innovation available to universities, hospitals, and government bodies, Research4Life enables scholars, students, and policymakers in over 11,500 institutions to participate fully in the international research community and to apply evidence-based knowledge in support of local and global progress.
Blessing Mawire, Program Manager of the Research4Life Country Connector initiative, said: “Equitable participation must go hand in hand with preserving research contributions from underrepresented regions. Through our partnership with CLOCKSS we make sure that scholarship from LMICs is valued, visible and permanently part of the global record.”
Alicia Wise, Executive Director of CLOCKSS, added: “Knowledge is humanity’s most renewable resource. By linking access with preservation, we strengthen the foundations of research so that ideas born today continue to inspire generations to come.”
Strengthening local scholarly publishing
In recent years, Research4Life has expanded its focus to support local knowledge producers and publishers, making research from LMICs a visible and integral part of global knowledge exchange. For example, in 2024, Research4Life – in collaboration with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) – helped develop multilingual training workshops on open access publishing that reached more than 600 editors and publishers across 25 countries. Building on this success, Research4Life is currently supporting a course for publishers, journal editors, and managers on DOAJ indexation, further strengthening local publishing capacity and visibility.
Preserving research for the future
However, ensuring that this wealth of knowledge remains available for future generations requires more than access. It requires preservation. Without secure archiving, valuable research can be lost when publishers cease operation or are unable to maintain their platforms or when natural or technical disasters strike. CLOCKSS was established to meet this need, operating as a not-for-profit digital archive to protect scholarly content. Working with a global community of libraries and publishers, CLOCKSS safeguards published research, ensuring the contributions of researchers remain permanently available.
A defining feature of CLOCKSS is its “triggered content.” When a publisher can no longer provide access to a journal or book – because it has ceased operation or withdrawn from the market- CLOCKSS makes that content open access and freely available to everyone. In this way, CLOCKSS not only preserves academic work but also ensures that it remains available to the world, whenever access would otherwise be lost. Today, CLOCKSS preserves more than 60 million articles and books from 650 publishers worldwide, including content originating in LMICs.