This document summarizes discussions from the NISO (National Information Standards Organization) conference on standards and best practices. It describes recent work by NISO committees on: 1) Revising the KBART (Knowledge Bases and Related Tools) standard to improve metadata for consortial holdings and e-books/proceedings. 2) Finalizing the PIE-J (Presentation and Identification of E-Journals) standard for consistent journal title display and ISSN assignment. 3) Developing the Open Discovery Initiative to define fair linking and usage data exchange between libraries, publishers and discovery services. 4) Forming a working group on Open Access Metadata and Indicators to define a

1. Actions and Updates on the
Standards and Best Practices Front
Nettie Lagace, NISO - @abugseye
Laurie Kaplan, Proquest
NASIG 29th Annual Conference, Fort Worth TX
May 3, 2014

2. What’s NISO?
• Non-profit industry trade association accredited by ANSI
with 150+ members
• Mission of developing and maintaining standards related to
information, documentation, discovery and distribution of
published materials and media
• Represent US interests to ISO TC46 (Information and
Documentation) and also serve as Secretariat for ISO
TC46/SC 9 (Identification and Description)
• Responsible for standards like ISSN, DOI, Dublin Core
metadata, DAISY digital talking books, OpenURL, SIP, NCIP,
MARC records and ISBN (indirectly)
• Volunteer driven organization: 400+ spread out across the
world

3. Premise of “Standards”
• Consensus standards created by a community with
various stakeholders
• Trust
• Leading to broader acceptance
• Standards as plumbing
• Standards facilitate trade, commerce and innovation
• Standards reduce costs
• Standards support better communication and
interoperability across systems

4. the process of standards creation
4

5. Considerations
• Value to be gained
• Feasibility
• Community(ies) affected
• Stakeholders (Vested interests)
• Participants required/desired
• Timeframes
5

6. Today
• Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART)
• Presentation and Identification of E-Journals
(PIE-J)
• Open Discovery Initiative (ODI)
• Open Access Metadata and Indicators (OAMI)

7. Knowledge Bases and Related Tools
(KBART) Recommended Practice

8. KBART PHASE II
NOW
AVAILABLE!
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart

9. article citation
OpenURL
query (base URL
+ metadata string)
link resolver/
knowledge base
target (cited)
article
publisher
website
database
print
collections
gateways
publisher/provider
holdings data
repository
OpenURL basics

10. Where the chain breaks
• Wrong data
– Publisher gives wrong metadata for title to the KB
– Link resolver uses bad metadata to make link
– Link does not resolve to correct target
– Dead end 
• Outdated data
– Publisher said it has a particular issue
– Link resolver links to an article from it
– Issue has been removed
– Dead end 
– Or, provider doesn’t notify that issue is now live
– So no traffic from link resolvers to that issue!

11. KBART: A simple metadata exchange format

12. Phase II work:
1. Metadata for Consortia
2. Open Access metadata
3. E-book/ Conference Proceeding metadata
12

13. 1. Consortia
• Survey results
• Libraries purchase titles as a consortium
• Consortium administrators and librarians need
the same title-level information from their
consortium-purchased packages as they do
from “vanilla” publisher packages.
• Difficult to obtain accurate consortium-
specific title lists.
13

14. 1. Consortia
• Re-states the importance of providing a separate
file for each “Global” package that the Content
Provider offers.
• Consortium-specific files should be created when:
– A unique set of titles has been packaged for the
consortium, different than the Content Provider’s
standard packages.
– A package contains unique dates
of coverage.
14

15. 1. Consortia
• Changes to file naming for ALL files.
• Addition of “Region/Consortium” value in file
structure.
– [ProviderName]_[Region/Consortium]_[Package
Name]_[YYYY-MM-DD].txt
– Applicable to Consortia packages and Regional variants
(e.g., “Asia-Pacific”, “Germany”, etc.)
– “Global” value is used if the package
is available for all libraries to
purchase.
15

16. 2. Book Series / Proceedings
• Phase I
– recommendations were serial-centric
– Some fields were dual-purpose
• date_first_issue_online
• Identifiers
– Holding’s content type was ambiguous
• Challenges
– Both serial and monograph
– Users search for both titles
• New fields
– parent_publication_title_id
– preceding_publication_title_id
16

17. 2. E-book metadata
• Phase II
– Specify fields for use by serials and those for use
by monographs – disambiguation of usage
– 4 new monographic fields added, plus
- publication_type
- first_editor
- parent_publication
- preceding_publication_title_id
17

18. 3. Open Access
• Much more content now available in ‘OA’
form
• Importance of facilitating access to both paid
and free peer-reviewed, quality publications
(not just fee-based material).
18

19. 3. Open Access
• Challenges
– What to do with Hybrid OA models?
• Delayed OA – example: free access until one year ago.
• Title transfer OA – title changes from OA to paid (or vice
versa) upon transfer to another publisher.
• Author-paid OA – some articles fee-based.
• Full OA – all content is free
– Title-level vs. article-level OA metadata
19

20. 3. Open Access
• Free-text coverage_notes field suggested to
explain subtleties of OA availability for that
particular title.
• New field – access_type
– “F” – title is open access or free
– “P” – title requires payment of fee of any kind (even if
not 100% material is paid)
Use repeated fields for hybrid titles with different
coverage types
20

21. 1. Everything can be found at
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart/endorsement/
2. Review the requirements (data samples available)
3. Format your title lists accordingly.
4. Self-check to ensure they conform to the recommended
practice
5. Ensure that you have a process in place for regular data
updates
6. Register your organization on the KBART registry website:
http://bit.ly/kbartregistry
Publisher Involvement

22. NISO – PIE-J
Presentation and Identification of
Electronic Journals
Laurie Kaplan
May 3, 2014
NASIG Annual Conference

23. Brief History
• NISO Working Group created in October, 2010
• 13 Working Group members representing
libraries, publishers/providers, and content
solutions vendors
• PIE-J finalized as a Recommended Practice,
dated March 25, 2013
• Standing Committee created in Sept. 2013
• 10 Committee members

24. PIE-J
• This Recommended Practice was developed in
order to provide guidance on the presentation
of e-journals
• particularly in the areas of title presentation,
accurate use of ISSN, and citation practices
• to publishers and platform providers as well as
to solve some long-standing concerns of
serials librarians

25. PIE-J Highlights
The recommended practice guidelines address the following:
• Retention of title and citation information under which articles were
originally published
• Display of title histories, including information relating to title changes and
related metadata
• Display of correct ISSN for different formats and for changed titles
• Retention and display of vital publication information across the history of
a journal,
• including publisher names; clear numbering and dates; editors, editorial
boards, and sponsoring organizations; and frequency of publication
• Graphic design and inclusion of information that allows easy access to
• all content
• Special considerations for retroactive digitization

26. • Full 67 page Recommended
Practice includes positive
examples of each point listed
and additional related
Appendix materials.
• Available on the NISO site:
http://www.niso.org/apps/org/
workgroup/piej/download.php/
10368/rp-16-2013_pie-j.pdf

27. Tri-fold Print Version: Electronic Version:
These are both two page brochures
focused on the main points in the
recommended practice

28. Representative
Example
• One examples from
the Appendix
• Clearly indicates the
point being
illustrated
• Links in the caption
point to the relevant
recommendation(s)

29. Creation of the Standing Committee
• Created in September 2013
• 10 committee members

30. What has the SC done?
• Review of all sections
– Indicate any changes
• New document(s) posted
– Publisher/Provider letter template
• Marketing Efforts
– Publicity letter for discussion lists and related
newsletters
– Presentations at conferences

31. PIE-J Document Statistics
4854
974
1459
129
Over 7400 Downloads (as of 4/23/14)
Full Recommended Practice
Print brochure
Online brochure
New Pie-J Letter

32. PIE-J Document Statistics
Published March 2013:
• Full Recommended Practice – 4854 downloads
• Print Brochure – 974 downloads
• Online Brochure – 1459 downloads
– These stats rose quickly after the publicity information
was sent to various discussions lists and newsletters
Published March 2014:
• Publisher /Provider letter – 129 downloads
As of April 9, 2014

33. What can you do?
• Notify publishers/providers when their
websites are in compliance with PIE-J, or are
confusing or missing relevant information
• Work with interested publishers/providers
who want to improve their sites:
– Sage project with California Digital Library and
Becky Culbertson
• Send NISO your feedback

34. Contact information
PIE-J Website:
• http://www.niso.org/workrooms/piej
Send feedback to:
– nisohq@niso.org with subject PIE-J Feedback
Thank you!

35. The Open Discovery Initiative

36. The context for ODI
• Emergence of Library Discovery Services solutions
– Based on index of a wide range of content
– Commercial and open access
– Primary journal literature, ebooks, and more
• Adopted by thousands of libraries around the world,
and impact millions of users
36

37. General Goals
• Define ways for libraries to assess the level of
content providers’ participation in discovery services
• Help streamline the process by which content
providers work with discovery service vendors
• Define models for “fair” linking from discovery
services to publishers’ content
• Determine what usage statistics should be collected
for libraries and for content
providers
37

38. Balance of Constituents
Libraries
Publishers
Service Providers
38
Marshall Breeding, Independent Consultant
Jamene Brooks-Kieffer, Kansas State University
Laura Morse, Harvard University
Ken Varnum, University of Michigan
Sara Brownmiller, University of Oregon
Lucy Harrison, Florida Virtual Campus (D2D
liaison/observer)
Michele Newberry, Independent
Lettie Conrad, SAGE Publications
Jeff Lang, Thomson Reuters
Linda Beebe, American Psychological Assoc
Aaron Wood, Alexander Street Press
Roger Schonfeld, JSTOR, Ithaka
Jenny Walker, Independent Consultant
John Law, Proquest
Michael Gorrell, EBSCO Information Services
David Lindahl, University of Rochester (XC)
Jeff Penka, OCLC (D2D liaison/observer)

39. Subgroups
• Technical recommendations for data format
and data transfer
• Communication of library’s rights/Descriptors
regarding level of indexing
• Definition of fair linking
• Exchange of usage data
39

40. Deliverables
• Vocabulary
• NISO Recommended Practice
– Data format and data transfer
– Library rights to specific content
– Level of indexing
– Fair linking
– Usage statistics
• Mechanisms to evaluate conformance with
recommended practice
40

41. Current steps
• 30-day public comment period Fall 2013
• Working Group evaluation of comments, edits
to RP, responses
• Working Group approval
• Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee
approval
• NISO Publication
41

42. Open Access
Metadata and Indicators

45. Why is This Necessary?
Growth of OA + More Funder Mandates + Hybrids
=
Lots of OA papers with different associated rights
and responsibilities =
Confusion concerning who can do what when

46. Audience Segments
• Readers
• Authors
• Publishers
• Funders
• Search engines/discovery services
• Academic Libraries

47. Working Group’s Objectives
1. A specified format for bibliographic metadata and
possibly, a set of visual signals, describing the
readership rights associated with a single scholarly
work
2. Recommended mechanisms for publishing and
distributing this metadata
3. A report on the feasibility of including clear
information on downstream re-use rights within the
current project and, if judged feasible, inclusion of
these elements in outputs 1 and 2
4. A report stating how the adoption of these outputs
would answer (or not) specific use cases to be
developed by the Working Group

48. Working Group Membership
Co-chairs:
• Cameron Neylon, PLoS
• Ed Pentz, CrossRef
• Greg Tananbaum, Consultant
(SPARC)
Members:
• Tim Devenport, EDItEUR
• Gregg Gordon, Social Science
Research Network (SSRN)
• Julie Hardesty, Indiana
University Library
• Paul Keller, Europeana
Licensing Framework
• Cecy Marden, The
Wellcome Library
• Jack Ochs, American
Chemical Society
• Heather Reid, Copyright
Clearance Center
• Jill Russell, University of
Birmingham
• Chris Shillum, Elsevier
• Ben Showers, JISC
• Eefke Smit, STM
Association
• Christine Stohn, Ex Libris
• Timothy Vollmer, Creative
Commons

49. “open access” politically fraught
• Won’t use this label
Factual information:
– Is a specified work free to read – can it be
accessed by anyone who has access to the Web?
– What re-use rights are granted to this reader?
• Minimal set of metadata needed
• Decided not to create/recommend a logo

50. <free_to_read> Tag
• Indicates content can be read or viewed by
any user without payment or authentication
• Simple attribute of “yes” or “no”
• Optional start and end dates to accommodate
embargoes, special offers, etc.
<free_to_read="no" start_date="2014-02-3”
end_date=”2015-02-03"/>
<free_to_read="yes" start_date="2015-02-3”/>

51. • Content of this tag would include a stable identifier
expressed as an HTTP URI
• URI would point to license terms that are human and/or
machine readable
• Multiple URIs can be listed if article exists under specific
license for certain period of time and then changes
<license_ref start_date="2014-02-
03">http://www.psychoceramics.org/license_v1.html</li
cense_ref>
<license_ref start_date="2015-02-
03">http://www.psychoceramics.org/open_license.html</
license_ref>
<license_ref> Tag

52. Distributing Metadata
• Who? Publishers, aggregators, content
providers
• Include the metadata in all standard metadata
sets
– Intended that this population/distribution will
become part of standard editorial and production
workflows
• Could also include in alerts such as e-TOCs and
RSS feeds and A&I feeds

53. What’s Next?
• Public Review and Comment period
• Working Group will address and potentially
incorporate Comments
• NISO Approval
• NISO Publication as a Recommended Practice

54. Benefits of Successful
Implementation
Growth of OA + More Funder Mandates + Hybrids =
Lots of OA papers with different associated rights and
responsibilities =
Confusion concerning who can do what when
+
OA Metadata Indicator =
Transmittal of an article’s openness in a manner that
makes discovery, tracking, readership, and (hopefully)
reuse straightforward

55. Thank you! Questions?
Spring Colors! by cerebros1 is licensed under CC-BY