Interesting news.
What worries me a little is that it seems there are a lot of bodies looking at this - so will we end up with a single standard in a reasonable (ie ASAP) time frame?
All the best
Anna
Anna Clements
Enterprise Architect
University of St Andrews
St Andrews, Fife,KY16 9AL
On 7 Feb 2013, at 17:27, "Cynthia Hodgson" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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
>
> 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 ([log in to unmask]). 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 [log in to unmask]
>
>
> Cynthia Hodgson
> Technical Editor / Consultant
> National Information Standards Organization
> [log in to unmask]
> 301-654-2512
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