Cycles 10/11 Archiving Proposals Now Available for Review and Commitment

In fall 2019 full WEST members submitted their unarchived serials holdings to WEST for analysis, which identifies the next set of journals for archiving. WEST is pleased to announce that the analysis is complete, and proposals for Cycles 10/11 archiving are now available for review in AGUA.

As noted in the 2019 program assessment, WEST has been very successful in securing retention commitments for Bronze journals (journals found in CLOCKSS, Portico, and JSTOR), and the most recent collections analysis shows that Cycles 10/11 are likely the last major opportunity for WEST Archive Holders to participate in archiving these materials. All archivers are encouraged to commit to all Bronze proposals and help WEST complete archiving these vital journals.

For Silver and Gold proposals, recent development efforts by the AGUA technical team allowed WEST to identify journals not yet archived in any of the Rosemont Shared Print Alliance partner programs and target these for archiving proposal. In some cases proposals were also expanded to journals that have been retained in fewer than three partner programs, intentionally creating redundancy in the collective collection to mitigate risks inherent to print collections. These materials will be rigorously validated for completeness (and condition, for Gold journals), with Builders seeking volumes from other WEST partners to fill any gaps in their collections. This ensures that WEST preserves the most complete backfiles possible in order to make them available to current and future scholars, strengthening both regional and national shared print collections.

To review your institution’s archiving proposals and submit archiving commitments, log in to AGUA and navigate to the Review Proposed Journals page. Please note that the AGUA interface has recently been updated with a new, modern design that is fully accessible. Please see the updated WEST AGUA User manual for instructions on using the new interface.

For a detailed overview of the Cycles 10/11 collections analysis with key findings and recommendations, please see the complete WEST Cycles 10/11 Collection Analysis Report, available on the WEST website.