[Asis-l] NISO Releases Draft Open Access and Metadata Indicators Recommended Practice for Comments

[Cynthia Hodgson]

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is seeking comments
on the draft recommended practice Open Access Metadata and Indicators (NISO
RP-22-201x). Launched in January 2013, the NISO Open Access Metadata and
Indicators Working Group was chartered to develop protocols and mechanisms
for transmitting the access status of scholarly works, specifically to
indicate whether a specific work is openly accessible (i.e., free-to-read by
any user who can get to the work over the internet) and what re-use rights
might be available. This draft recommended practice proposes the adoption of
two core pieces of metadata and associated tags: <free_to_read> and
<license_ref>. The first tag would indicate that the work is freely
accessible during the specified timeframe (if applicable). The second tag
would contain a reference to a URI that carries the license terms specifying
how a work may be used.

"Currently publishers provide articles that are free-to-read under a wide
range of re-use terms and licenses," explains Cameron Neylon, Advocacy
Director, PLOS, and Co-chair of the NISO Open Access Metadata and Indicators
Working Group. "It is unclear to readers when an article is freely
accessible and what their re-use rights are. Funders are unsure if the
publication of an article complies with their open access policies.
Aggregators and platform or knowledgebase providers have no consistent
mechanism for machine-processing metadata and identifying the accessibility
or rights status. Adoption of these two common metadata designations will
allow both humans and machines to assess the status of content."

"Use and re-use rights can be difficult to explain in metadata," states Ed
Pentz, Executive Director, CrossRef, and Co-chair of the NISO Open Access
Metadata and Indicators Working Group. "By publishing URIs for applicable
licenses and including these URIs in the metadata for the content, more
detailed explanations of rights can be made available. The <license_ref>
metadata can also be used to express how usage rights change over time or
point to different licenses for particular time periods, for example when an
embargo applies."

"The recommended metadata tags can easily be incorporated into existing
metadata distribution channels, encoded in XML, and added to existing
schemas and workflows," states Greg Tananbaum, Consultant at SPARC and
Co-chair of the NISO Open Access Metadata and Indicators Working Group.
"Publishers and platform providers can use the <free_to_read> tag to
automate the display of appropriate status icons to users. The combination
of <free_to_read> and <license_ref> metadata provides a mechanism for
signaling or determining compliance with most funder and institutional
policies that allow compliance through the article publisher's site."

"In addition to the recommendations, the Working Group has defined the most
common use cases," states Nettie Lagace, NISO's Associate Director for
Programs. "For each use case, the current situation and applicable
stakeholders are described and the extent to which the recommendations will
solve the situation is explained. The group has also identified several
issues for further follow-up, such as the incorporation of the recommended
metadata into existing formats, such as ONIX."

The draft recommended practice is open for public comment through February
4, 2014. To download the draft or submit online comments, visit the Open
Access Metadata and Indicators webpage at: www.niso.org/workrooms/oami/.

 

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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