Research4Life and CLOCKSS Forge Partnership to Secure Global Research Access and Preservation
By Clara Jimenez, Global Development Reporter October 7, 2025
In a vital move to support equity in the global research landscape, the non-profit initiatives Research4Life and CLOCKSS have announced a new partnership aimed at creating a resilient and sustainable system for scholarly content. The collaboration links two crucial components of academic progress: access and long-term digital preservation.
Research4Life is widely recognized for reshaping access to research in over 125 Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), providing institutions with free or low-cost access to essential research in fields like health, agriculture, and law. This access enables over 11,500 institutions to fully participate in the international research community.
Ensuring Knowledge Never Fades
While Research4Life tackles the immediate challenge of information access, CLOCKSS addresses the critical long-term threat of content loss. Operating as a not-for-profit digital archive, CLOCKSS works with a global network of libraries and publishers to safeguard published research. This preservation ensures that valuable academic work is not lost due to platform failures, publisher cessation, or technical disasters.
A defining feature of the CLOCKSS service is its "triggered content" mechanism: should a publisher fail to provide access to a journal or book, CLOCKSS makes that preserved content immediately and freely available as open access.
Strengthening Local Ecosystems
The new partnership will see CLOCKSS extending its preservation services directly into the Research4Life Connector countries. This initiative involves collaborating with local publishers in LMICs to ensure that their original scholarly output is secured and made a permanent part of the global scholarly record.
Blessing Mawire, Program Manager of the Research4Life Country Connector initiative, underscored the importance of this dual focus: “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.”
The two organizations believe that by combining Research4Life's strength in access and capacity building with CLOCKSS's expertise in long-term preservation, they are reinforcing the foundations of research, making knowledge from all parts of the globe both accessible today and secured for future generations.
