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Overview

ONIX for Serials is a family of XML formats for communicating information about serial products and subscription information, using the design principles and many of the elements defined in ONIX for Books.

The development of ONIX for Serials has been undertaken in partnership between EDItEUR and NISO, the US National Information Standards Organization. Initially through a Joint Working Party and under the guidance of the ONIX Serials Steering Group, the original work has been taken forward to the point where three sets of application messages have been or are being defined and piloted, each supported by an outline specification, XML schema, and full HTML documentation:

SPS (Serials Products and Subscriptions) is a format for communicating information about serial subscription products, with or without price information, and optionally including subscription information relating to a particular subscriber.

SOH (Serials Online Holdings) is a format for communicating electronic serials holdings details from publication access management systems to user libraries.

SOH version 1.1 is now available for review and piloting.

SRN (Serials Release Notification) is a format for communicating information about the publication or electronic availability of one or more serial releases.

ONIX Serials Coverage Statement is an XML structure capable of carrying simple or complex statements of holdings of serial resources. The Coverage Statement is not a message format, but rather a structure that is included in other ONIX for Serials formats. The Coverage Statement may also be used to express holdings or coverage in XML structures other than those specified in ONIX for Serials.

Each of these formats uses a common file of coded data elements, including permitted code values for each element.

The ONIX Serials Codelists file is included together with the XML Schema for each format, or the latest version can be downloaded separately here, so that code list updates can be obtained without re-installing the schemas themselves. An eye-readable version of the codelist is also available.

Fundamentally, ONIX for Serials is best viewed as a growing "toolkit" of individual and composite elements and content definitions, out of which it will be possible to construct message formats for a variety of applications.