David MartinDigital Policy Management: JISC/BL Workshop 24 April 2006
ONIX for Licensing Terms
• What is ONIX?
• Background to ONIX for Licensing Terms
• ONIX Publisher License format
• JISC projects
• Progress and prospects
ONIX for Licensing Terms
• A family of XML formats for communicating rich metadata about books, serials and other published media, using common data elements, “composites”, and code lists
• XML Schemas, DTDs and user documentation
• Developed and maintained by EDItEUR through a growing number of partnerships with other organisations
ONIX
• ONIX for Books: now adopted in at least a dozen countries
• First release in 2000: Release 3.0 in 2007
• ONIX for Serials (with NISO): three application families
• Serial Online Holdings (SOH): Version 1.0
• Serial Products & Subscriptions (SPS) and Serial Release Notifications (SRN): pilot Version 0.9
• ONIX for DOI registration: mEDRA and Nielsen BookData
Existing ONIX formats
• Growth of digital collections in libraries
• Need to automate management of digital resources
• Need to relate licenses to institutional policies
• Variation in licensing terms
• Complexity of license documentation
• Uncertainty at the point of use
• How could publishers and vendors help?
Licensing terms – the problem
• Express license terms in machine-readable form
• Communicate electronically from vendor to subscriber
• Enable license terms to be loaded directly into an ERMS
• But this needs a standard...
Deliver license terms digitally
• DLF ERMI project (phase 1)
• Set out to describe and define architectures needed to manage collections of licensed digital resources
• Problem definition/road map
• Functional requirements
• Workflow and entity relationship diagrams
• Data element dictionary (inc licensing terms)
• ERMS data structure
Background
• ERMI Phase 1 as a basis for a standard for license terms expression; commissioned from Rightscom
• ERMI 1 was a valuable starting point, but further development required
• Terms dictionary would need a more rigorous (onto)logical structure
• Proposed an <indecs>-based rights model: licenses are about events (permitted, prohibited, required, etc)
EDItEUR review of ERMI
• Proof of concept project in 2005, supported by the Publishers Licensing Society and JISC
• Work-in-progress drafts published on the EDItEUR website
• Two JISC projects under way in 2005/2006
• International License Expression Working Group (LEWG) sponsored by NISO, DLF, PLS and EDItEUR, to provide input to ONIX development and to ensure liaison with ERMI 2
ONIX for Licensing Terms
• The first member of what will become a family of ONIX Licensing Terms formats, using the same underlying structures
• An XML message format that can deliver a structured expression of a publisher’s license for the use of (digital) resources, from publisher to agent to subscribing institution (or consortium)
• A specification, an XML schema, and a formal dictionary of controlled values
ONIX Publisher License message
• Those parts of the written license that may be actionable in an ERMS need to be delivered in a fully machine-interpretable form
• Those parts of the license that are not actionable can be quoted within the XML expression and categorised in a controlled way, so that the subscribing institution can create a “knowledge base” of its licenses that can be searched consistently
Structured?
• Not just terms specifying permitted and prohibited usages and related conditions, though these are essential; but also, for example...
• Terms specifying notice periods and permitted dates for changes – to support a diary system
• Terms specifying bases of fee calculation in successive license years – to support budgeting and checking suppliers’ invoices
Actionable?
• Allow a publisher’s license to be loaded automatically into an institution’s ERMS
• Enable the institution to map license terms against its own resource management policies and identify compatibilities and incompatibilities
• Make it easier to inform users
• An essential part of making it easier for libraries to manage complex electronic resources – but only a part.
The objective...
• Negotiation and mapping of a complete publisher license - BIC, John Wiley and Cranfield University
• Definition of tools and services to help publishers produce ONIX-PL message – BIC, ALPSP, Loughborough University
• Through these projects, we are extending and refining the draft format, and setting up an initial dictionary
JISC projects, 2005-2006
• The first JISC project is close to completion
• ONIX-PL format specification essentially finished, though not yet published
• Accompanied by a first release of elements of the ONIX Licensing Terms Dictionary
• Complete expression of the Wiley EAL Academic License (except for fee calculation elements)
Progress to date
• Message header: from, to, date, etc
• Preamble: license identification, parties, dates, signatories, etc
• Definitions
• Structured terms
• Term citations
Components of the message
• Agents: persons and organizations referred to in the license
• Resources: licensed resources may be defined in a document separate from the license expression, and that could itself be an ONIX file; but we also need to define resources that are derived from usage, eg permitted extracts
• Services, Dates/Times, Periods, Places, Events, States, Usages
• Documents referred to from the license expression
Definitions
• Supply terms: terms relating to the supply of or access to licensed materials
• Usage terms: terms related to permitted or prohibited usage
• Payment terms: terms related to fee calculation rules and payment rules
• Others may be added if found necessary
Structured terms
• Terms handled wholly by citation under a controlled category header; eg assignment; force majeure; warranties
• Terms handled substantially by citation, but with some structured elements; eg termination clauses, with structured information about date limits and notice periods; or rights to continued access after termination, with structured information about resources to which such rights apply
Term citations
• A controlled set of values and definitions that licensors can tap into and use “as is”, or take as a basis for their own variant if necessary
• But there are grounds for optimism that different wording in different licenses may rather often map acceptably into the same expression in XML
The importance of the dictionary
• It all looks and sounds complex
• It IS complex, but not as complex as it looks
• Mapping to XML forces clarification of what the license says, but not necessarily greater specificity – deliberate generality is OK
• As well as the license expression standard, we will need high-level tools for licensors to work with in order to create ONIX-PL expressions
• We will need ERMS that can input the messages and map them against institutional policies
What are we learning?
• The second JISC project will profile the kind of tools that are needed for publishers
• Experience with the work to date is already giving us ideas on how they might look
• Development, however, will be a significant effort
• We need to, and have already started to, engage the ERMS developers on the receiving end
• Probably two or more years’ work ahead?
Next steps
• EDItEUR: www.editeur.org
• ERMI 1 report: www.diglib.org/pubs/dlfermi0408/
David Martin [email protected]
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