[GOAL] NISO Launches New Initiative to Develop Standard for Open Access Metadata and Indicators

[Richard Poynder]

[Forwarding from Cynthia Hodgson at NISO, via Peter Suber and SPARC OA
Forum.]

 

NISO Launches New Initiative to Develop Standard for Open Access Metadata
and Indicators

 

Interested participants from all library types, publishers, and funding
agencies are encouraged to contact NISO

 

February 7, 2013 - Baltimore, MD - The National Information Standards
Organization (NISO) voting members have approved a new project to develop
standardized bibliographic metadata and visual indicators to describe the
accessibility of journal articles as well as potentially describe how "open"
the item is. Many offerings are available from publishers under the banner
of Open Access (OA), Increased Access, Public Access, or other descriptions;
the terms offered vary between publishers and, in some cases, based on the
funding organization of the author. Adding to the potential confusion, a
number of publishers also offer hybrid options in which some articles are
"open" while the rest of the journal's content are available only by
subscription or license. No standardized bibliographic metadata currently
provides information on whether a specific article is freely readable and
what re-use rights might be available to readers. Visual indicators or icons
indicating the openness of an article are inconsistent in both design and
use across publishers or even across journals from the same publisher.

 

"The NISO OA metadata and indicator project would complement other related
efforts currently underway," states Nettie Lagace, NISO's Associate Director
for Programs. "Such projects include CrossMark, CrossRef's update
identification service; How Open Is It?, a guide developed by PLoS, SPARC,
and OASPA; Vocabularies for OA (V40A), a JISC/UKOLN project; ONIX-PL, a
specification for communicating licensing terms developed by EDItEUR; the
Linked Content Coalition; and NISO's Open Discovery Initiative. Coordination
and communication with these projects will be an important aspect of the
NISO working group's efforts."

 

"The benefits of having standardized OA metadata and indicators should have
a positive impact on many participants in the scholarly communications
chain," explains Todd Carpenter, NISO's Executive Director. "Funders who
have implemented OA mandates would have a mechanism to determine if a
specific article or researcher is compliant with their policies. Publishers
of hybrid journals would benefit by having a simple mechanism for signaling
the OA status of the articles published under that model. Authors could more
easily determine whether their selected distribution option is being
respected and be able to document their compliance with funder requirements.
Readers could more easily ascertain from search results if they can read an
article for free or fee-and more easily adhere to the terms that publishers
have established. Aggregators and discovery service providers would have an
improved mechanism of programmatically collecting and surfacing OA articles
that are available in the community."

 

The project launched by NISO will focus initially on metadata elements that
describe the readership rights associated with an OA article. Specifically,
the NISO Working Group will determine the optimal mechanisms to describe and
transmit the right, if any, an arbitrary user has to access a specific
article from any internet connection point. Recommendations will include a
means for distribution and aggregation of this metadata in machine-readable
form. The group will also consider the feasibility of incorporating
information on re-use rights and the feasibility of reaching agreement on
transmission of that data.

 

Individuals interested in participating in this working group should contact
Nettie Lagace ( <mailto:nlagace at niso.org> nlagace at niso.org). An interest
group list for this project will be available for those who would like to
receive updates on the Working Group's progress and provide feedback to the
group on its work. To subscribe, send an e-mail to
<mailto:oa-indicators-info-subscribe at list.niso.org>
oa-indicators-info-subscribe at list.niso.org.

 

Cynthia Hodgson

Technical Editor / Consultant

National Information Standards Organization

 <mailto:chodgson at niso.org> chodgson at niso.org

301-654-2512

 

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