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The Japan Institute of Heterocyclic Chemistry has filed a lawsuit against virtual preservation site CLOCKSS, which made thousands of articles published through a journal once controlled through the institute accessible, Chemistry World has learned.
In April, Chemistry World reported that the Japanese institute had disposed of all papers published through Heterocycles since its launch in 1973, without warning. An archived edition of an editorial published on Heterocycles’ online page stated that the magazine had “played its role. ” in selling the popularity of heterocyclic chemistry as a discipline.
At the time, Alicia Wise, executive director of CLOCKSS, a dark archive of millions of journal articles and thousands of books, told Chemistry World that her organization had kept an entire record of heterocycles since the Japanese institute joined the service in 2011. CLOCKSS policy states that the archive can make a journal’s contents public—even with the publisher’s consent—six consecutive months after its disappearance from the Internet.
On June 25, seven months after Heterocycles closed and libraries subscribing to the journal were left without access to its articles, CLOCKSS generated access to approximately 18,000 articles published in the journal’s 106 volumes.
But Chemistry World understands that the Japanese institute has filed a lawsuit opposing CLOCKSS. Wise responded to questions about the lawsuit in several requests for comment. The Japanese institute also responded.
“Throughout this saga, the conduct of the Japan Institute of Heterocyclic Chemistry has been troubling, adding the vague and unsigned declaration of discontinuation, the removal of articles without comment or caution despite ongoing library subscriptions, and now this lawsuit opposed to the critical infrastructure of clinical publishing,” says Daniel Himmelstein, head of knowledge integration at Related Sciences, a drug discovery company.
“My belief about CLOCKSS is that they do things through the book,” says Dave Hansen, executive director of the nonprofit Authors Alliance. “I would be surprised if they did this without knowingly performing their day-to-day jobs under the terms of this agreement, whatever it may be. “
Hansen speculates that the Japanese institute is likely negotiating with a for-profit publisher or other corporation to host Heterocycles. “In that case, you wouldn’t need a service like CLOCKSS to be activated where access would be provided. “”That’s the only genuine explanation I can think of as to why they would go after him so aggressively. “
“Without these documents, it is difficult to assess the merits of the case, but in the absence of a misstep on the part of CLOCKSS, it would appear unfounded,” adds Himmelstein. “This is a vital case to watch, as we test CLOCKSS and whether its protocols can defeat a hostile publisher in precisely the scenario they were designed for: preserving clinical files when the rights holder does not provide access. Unfortunately, The related legal prices will likely put pressure on the budget of the non-profit organization CLOCKSS.