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Overview

ONIX for Licensing Terms
ONIX for Licensing Terms (OLT) is the generic name for the most recent addition to the ONIX family. Built on a consistent underlying model of rights and usages, OLT formats are specialised to the needs of different user groups and applications.

ONIX-PL
ONIX for Publications Licenses (ONIX-PL) is intended to support the licensing of electronic resources – such as online journals and ebooks – to academic and corporate libraries.

As the number of digital resources in library collections grows, libraries have increasing difficulty in managing, and ensuring compliance with, the correspondingly growing number of different licenses that they hold. ONIX-PL will enable libraries to:

• express licenses in a machine-readable format
• load them into electronic resource management systems
• link them to digital resources
• communicate key usage terms to users

Publishers can also benefit from the ability to maintain their licenses in a standard machine-readable form.

OPLE Software
OPLE (the ONIX-PL Editor) is a browser-based software tool which enables users to create and edit ONIX-PL expressions. It is offered free-of-charge as Open Source software.

ONIX-PL and OPLE listserv
If you would like to keep in touch with developments in ONIX-PL and OPLE, please sign up to the ONIX-PL listserv. Notices of updates to the format and to the software are always sent to this list; and you can use it to ask questions and to participate in discussion about implementing ONIX-PL.

ONIX-RS
ONIX for Rights Information Services (ONIX-RS) is designed to support searches for rights information about books and the responses that these searches produce. It comprises a set of messages connecting initial requesters through a central service to various reference sources and eventually the RROs that may be mandated to grant rights for the abstract works that the books express. The initial requesters are usually libraries, whilst the reference sources may be international library systems, books in print agencies or other authority files.

Typically, ONIX-RS is used to seek information and, if appropriate, licenses for using the content of printed books that are to be digitized. Taken together, its messages support the process of diligent search generally required before licenses can be granted or determined to be unnecessary.

ONIX for RROs
Reproduction Rights Organizations (RROs) are the agencies which manage the licensing of rights in printed and other media. EDItEUR is working with IFRRO (International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations) and its member agencies to develop, maintain and support a set of ONIX message formats for communication between IFRRO agencies.

Royalty Reporting
EDItEUR is working with the US Book Industry Study Group (BISG) on the development and piloting of computer-to-computer message formats for royalty reporting from licensees to licensors or their agents. This work is part of a broader development programme of rights-related standards initiated by the BISG Rights Committee. A “strawman” analysis of data content required for royalty reporting is available here.

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