[open-science] NISO Launches New Initiative to Develop Standard for Open Access Metadata and Indicators

[Peter Murray-Rust]

We should input into this?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Poynder <ricky at richardpoynder.co.uk>
Date: Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 6:13 AM
Subject: [GOAL] NISO Launches New Initiative to Develop Standard for Open
Access Metadata and Indicators
To: goal at eprints.org


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

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*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.****

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“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.”****

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“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 (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 oa-indicators-info-subscribe at list.niso.org.*
***

 ****

Cynthia Hodgson****

Technical Editor / Consultant****

National Information Standards Organization****

chodgson at niso.org****

301-654-2512****

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-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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