CLOCKSS: Business History

CLOCKSS: Business History

The CLOCKSS Archive transitioned from an initiative with part-time outreach support to fulltime management of outreach, financial processes, and marketing efforts in late January 2011. Randy S. Kiefer began as the first fulltime Executive Director of the CLOCKSS Archive. From that date, the organizational environment has stabilized and grown steadily.

Business Performance

The performance of the archive is noted in the following measurements (as of 3/31/2013):

Library Recap	31-Dec-10	31-Dec-11	31-Dec-12	30-Sep-13
Governing Libraries (GL)	12	12	12	12
Supporting Libraries incl. GL	86	139	246	314
Year over year increase	59	53	107	68

Publisher Recap	31-Dec-10	31-Dec-11	31-Dec-12	30-Sep-13
Governing Publishers (GP)	11	11	11	11
Participating Publishers incl. GP	33	63	120	170
Year over year increase	15	30	57	50

Critical Factors

The critical factors for the sustainability of the archive is a steady number of renewing supporting libraries, a steady growth in the number of publishers, and the spread of revenues across the various fee levels. The underlying support of the technical work performed by the LOCKSS team is focused on the total income derived from publishers in the form of annual participation fees and ingests fees for their content. In 2011, the revenue level achieved a solid level of coverage of the technical team’s expenses. In 2012, the level of labor absorption, i.e. Total Fees from Publishers divided by the Total Costs of the LOCKSS Team) grew from 78.5% to 85%. The optimal goal is 90% or better, and this is reflected in our projections documented in the CLOCKSS: 2013-2018 Budget.

Relevant Documents

• CLOCKSS: 2013-2018 Budget (available on request)
• Supporting Libraries
• Participating Publishers