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About

About

Introduction

EDItEUR is the international group coordinating development of the standards infrastructure for electronic commerce in the book, e-book and serials sectors. EDItEUR provides its membership with research, standards and guidance in such diverse areas as:

  • EDI and other e-commerce standards for book and serial transactions
  • Bibliographic and product information
  • The standards infrastructure for digital publishing
  • Rights management and trading
  • Radio frequency identification tags

Established in 1991, EDItEUR is a truly international organisation with over 100 members from 23 countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, United States and most of the European countries.

As an acknowledged leader in global standards for the exchange of bibliographic information and of e-commerce messages in the book and journal supply chains, EDItEUR is now engaged in shaping key national and international projects aimed at developing rights and permissions expressions.

As the digital media landscape converges EDItEUR will continue to monitor developments in other sectors seeking out, on behalf of its stakeholders, opportunities for collaboration with other industries and standards organisations that will help its members not only to keep pace with change but to influence the future.

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EDItEUR's scope and mission

We work globally on behalf of:

  • Book and journal publishers, of all sizes and in all sectors
  • Book wholesalers, distributors and retailers
  • Subscription agents and other intermediaries in the library supply chain
  • Online content aggregators
  • Metadata aggregators and intermediaries
  • Libraries (national, academic, special, public) and library consortia
  • Rights management organisations in these sectors
  • Systems vendors and other technical services supplying any of these sectors
  • Other national and international standards organisations operating in the same or contiguous sectors
  • Trade associations representing any of these groups, at global, regional or national level

Our role is:

  • To identify, specify, develop, publish, and maintain our own messaging standards in support of e-commerce within our sectors, where a requirement for standards is identified anywhere within our stakeholder community
  • To promote the implementation both of our own standards and of other appropriate standards within our stakeholder community, including through the creation of a global network of organisations collaborating to facilitate the implementation of standards
  • To liaise and engage with other standards bodies, both within our sector and in contiguous media sectors, to ensure the closest possible collaboration in standards development, promotion and deployment, and encourage mutual learning and the avoidance of duplication and waste
  • To provide a secretariat and management service for other standards organisations, and to seek other ways of supporting other standards organisations where this may be appropriate
  • To engage in projects which support our other objectives
  • To provide a centre of standards expertise for our stakeholder community, including a service to monitor, report from and coordinate with other organisations that are developing related standards that are important to our stakeholders.

We encourage the greatest possible participation of our stakeholders and our membership in decision making processes, particularly in the establishment of strategy and priorities and the approval of our specifications.

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EDItEUR's Operating Principles

  1. We are a membership organisation, bringing together members from many different parts of the book and journal supply chains in many different countries. We seek to serve all our members without favouring specific sectoral or national interests; and to serve the broader stakeholder community from which our membership is drawn.
  2. We encourage the greatest possible stakeholder and member engagement in our decision making processes.
  3. Our primary objectives, as defined in our mission and scope statements, are:
    1. Implementation of standards (both our own and other relevant standards)
      1. In established markets and territories
      2. In new/developing markets and territories
    2. Compliance, for example by delivering
      1. Documentation
      2. Validation tools
      3. Training
    3. Continuous development of our standards and services to meet market requirements
  4. We are committed to excellence in all our deliverables and in all aspects of our service to our stakeholders; our most precious asset is our brand, and we aim through our performance to enhance our brand value and to increase global brand awareness
  5. In support of our primary objectives, the most critical priority for EDItEUR management is to create and maintain an organisation that is both credible and sustainable, with access to the right balance of expertise to allow it to undertake its mission as defined in our scope and mission statement
  6. In order to do this, we need to generate balanced and sustainable revenue streams
    1. From membership subscriptions
    2. From services
    3. From projects, training and consultancy
  7. Our primary mechanism for revenue growth is to continue to grow our membership; however, growth in our membership should never be seen purely in financial terms – it is at least as important in adding to our credibility as a governance organisation, and in improving the geographic and sectoral “spread” of representation. We prioritise retention of our members, to maintain stability and continuity in our membership base. We will continually strive to broaden our membership in all membership categories.
  8. We will continue to seek opportunities to serve other standards organisations, to minimise the problem of proliferation and to be recognised as a single global focus of industry expertise in standards development, deployment and governance.  This both increases efficiency for the industry as a whole, and also supports the credibility of the EDItEUR brand, a critical priority.
  9. We will continue to seek to participate in projects which can make effective use of our expertise, build our knowledge or network, support our other objectives and are at a minimum financially neutral. In undertaking projects (including, for example, training) we will seek not to compete with our members but rather to support them.
  10. We strive to continue to be an excellent employer and to develop and retain the expertise that, alongside our brand, is our primary asset.

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EDItEUR's standards

EDItEUR has developed a number of key standards that are already internationally used within the books and serials supply chains to facilitate e-commerce, enable the transmission of rich metadata records, and that use existing identifiers. Wide implementation of any current or future EDItEUR standard is positively welcomed and we allow any of our standards to be used free of charge by any organisation with an interest in the areas that we cover. Although we do not charge any fees, we make our standards available to you under licence. By downloading, importing, copying, abstracting from, modifying, circulating or implementing any of the EDItEUR Standards you agree to abide by the terms of our licence. For the full text of our licence, click here.

EDItEUR has also adopted a policy on intellectual property that covers the process of standards development. It aims to protect the intellectual property of members, participants and contributors to the standards development process, while ensuring that the standards and associated material can remain available free of charge to all. For the full text of the policy, click here.

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Membership

Membership of EDItEUR is open to all organisations with an interest in e-commerce in the book and serials supply chain or related identification standards. Its current membership reflects the diversity of this community and includes national libraries, metadata aggregators, book retailers and wholesalers, subscription agents, national standards organisations, and systems vendors. Find out more

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Governance

The members of EDItEUR's Board are:

  • Jens Bammel (International Publishers' Association)
  • Beat Barblan (International ISBN Agency)
  • Philippe Beauvillard (Le Cercle de la Librairie)
  • Graham Bell (EDItEUR)
  • Richard Gedye (International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers and Federation of European Publishers)
  • Karina Luke (Book Industry Communication)
  • Paola Mazzucchi (Associazione Italiana Editori)
  • Jesús Peraita (la Federación de Gremios de Editores de España)
  • Ronald Schild (Marketing und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels GmbH)
  • Olav Stokkmo (International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations)
  • Mathijs Suidman (Centraal Boekhuis)
  • Len Vlahos (Book Industry Study Group)
  • Tom West (Publishers Licensing Society)
  • Neil Wilson (British Library)

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Participation

EDItEUR's members contribute significantly to its future strategic direction and development plans. There are a number of major committees and working groups including:

Open Meetings are also held by EDItEUR twice a year. Documents of the most recent meetings can be found here:

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Report from Executive Director to Members

Graham Bell has been Executive Director of EDItEUR since April 2014. His latest Executive Director's report dated April 2014, which was co-authored with the outgoing Executive Director Mark Bide, can be accessed here.

Previous members’ reports can be downloaded here:

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Newsletters

EDItEUR produces regular newsletters including updates about current projects and news of related standards and other developments that are of interest to members. Our most recent newsletters are available below. To sign up to receive newsletters as they are distributed, please let us know via the Contact form.

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Events

EDItEUR hosts events and meetings for members at both the Frankfurt and London Book Fairs. Find out about forthcoming events

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Who we are

portrait of Graham BellGraham Bell, Executive Director and Chief Data Architect, EDItEUR

Graham has recently been appointed Executive Director of EDItEUR, responsible for the overall development of EDItEUR’s standards and the management services it supplies to other standards agencies (including the International ISBN, ISTC and ISNI agencies).

He joined as its Chief Data Architect EDItEUR in 2010, focussed on the continuing development and application of ONIX for Books, and on other EDItEUR standards for both the book and serials sectors.

Graham previously worked for HarperCollins Publishers in the UK, where most recently he was Head of Publishing Systems. He led the development of bibliographic and digital asset management systems, and was involved with the launches of many HarperCollins digital initiatives including e-audio, e-books and print-on-demand programmes. He has over a decade of experience with ONIX for Books. Prior to HarperCollins, he worked as an editor and in IT roles within the magazine industry with Redwood Publishing and BBC Magazines.

portrait of Stella GriffithsStella Griffiths, Associate Director, EDItEUR and Executive Director, International ISBN Agency

Stella has worked in publishing and international standards related roles since 1989. She has held senior managerial positions in both the book and serials sectors for over 15 years including roles at Wiley-Blackwell and Oxford University Press spanning production, digital publications development and strategy, subscriptions fulfilment and marketing. At Nielsen BookData, she was Senior Manager of the UK ISBN Agency where she was a lead contributor in the ISO revision of the ISBN standard and the transition to the 13-digit ISBN. Stella joined EDItEUR in 2009 and became Executive Director of the International ISBN Agency in April 2011.

portrait of Tim DevenportTim Devenport, Lead Consultant to ICEDIS, EDItEUR

Tim is an independent business consultant and project manager in the serials publishing sector, and has provided expert help to EDItEUR for many years. He joined EDItEUR in 2011. He has worked with many of the major academic and business publishers, including Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, Thomson and Elsevier. Tim's professional interests span two main areas – in the standards arena, he works to help international and cross-industry bodies like EDItEUR and ICEDIS to develop frameworks that allow for automated and effective information and transactional exchange. Within publishing operations, he provides publishing clients with expertise in business analysis and the management of complex projects, typically spanning a number of functional areas and the implementation or migration of business systems for fulfilment, content hosting and e-commerce.

portrait of Nick WoodsNick Woods, Operations Manager, EDItEUR

Nick joined EDItEUR as Operations Manager in March 2011. He moves from local Government, where he worked as a Research & Statistics Officer, responsible for the production and reporting of many of the Council’s official statistics. He was involved in several consultation exercises and formalised his Council’s position on issues as varied as waste management and climate change. Prior to that, he gained five years of project management experience.

 

 

portrait of Alex IngramAlex Ingram, Standards Editor, EDItEUR

Alex Ingram is EDItEUR's Standards Editor. He is working with Graham Bell on development, maintenance and support of EDItEUR’s range of standards for the book trade, including ONIX, Thema and EDItX.

Alex is a well-known figure in the UK e-books world, having worked previously for Waterstones for nearly ten years, in roles from shop floor to administration and buying, and ultimately working within their online team running Waterstones’ e-books business and other projects. More recently, he managed the UK and Ireland arm of Apple’s iBookstore. His background as a dedicated book retailer will complement the skills of the existing EDItEUR staff.

EDItEUR is pleased to announce that Alex Ingram has been appointed as Standards Editor. He will be working with Graham Bell on development, maintenance and support of EDItEUR’s range of standards for the book trade, including ONIX, Thema and EDItX.
Alex is a well-known figure in the UK e-books world, having worked previously for Waterstones for nearly ten years, in roles from shop floor to administration and buying, and ultimately working within their online team running Waterstones’ e-books business and other projects. More recently, he managed the UK and Ireland arm of Apple’s iBookstore. His background as a dedicated book retailer will complement the skills of the existing EDItEUR staff.

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EDItEUR's consultants

In developing the standards and messaging format requirements that our members identify as priorities to support their supply chain, e-commerce and identification needs, EDItEUR uses freelance consultants who are renowned specialists in their particular fields and have a close understanding of current and expected future trends. This ensures not only that dedicated specialist resource will be available but also that the developed standards reflect a real understanding of the needs and issues our members face.

portrait of Brian GreenBrian Green, Principal Consultant to EDItEUR

Brian, formerly Executive Director of EDItEUR and the International ISBN Agency, is currently Principal Consultant to EDItEUR working mainly on the ARROW Plus project and in an advisory role to the International ISBN Agency. He was the founding Director of BIC, the UK book trade standards body, from 1991 until 2006 and prior to that, following many years in the publishing industry, was Director of Technology and Publishing Management at the UK Publishers Association.


portrait of Mark BideMark Bide, former Executive Director, EDIiEUR

Mark was appointed as Executive Director of EDItEUR in 2009, and held the post until 2014; he continues to serve the organisation in an advisory capacity. Mark is the Chairman of the Publishers Licensing Society, a post he has held since 2013. He has worked in and around the publishing industry for over 40 years, having been a Director of the European subsidiaries of both CBS Publishing and John Wiley & Sons, and for many years a consultant. He is a Visiting Professor of the University of the Arts, London.


Image of Francis Cave (photo by Alex Brown Dec 2009)Francis Cave is a publishing technology expert specialising in the use of XML, both in production and supply chain communications. Since 1999 he has provided EDItEUR with much of the expertise needed to develop and maintain specifications and tools in support of the growing range of XML-based supply chain communication standards under the ONIX and EDItX brands. Aside from work for EDItEUR, he is in demand as a publishing technology consultant, application developer and training course presenter. He chairs BSI Technical Committee IST/41, which is concerned with international standardization of XML-based schema languages, topic map technologies and office application file formats (ODF and OOXML).

 

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Identifiers

Contact Details

  • EDItEUR Limited
  • United House
  • North Road
  • London
  • N7 9DP
  • UK

  • Registered office as above


  • email: info@editeur.org
  • tel: +44 (0)20 7503 6418
  • fax: +44 (0)20 7503 6418

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