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 david@polecat.dircon.co.uk

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