ONIX for Licensing Terms
As the number of the
digital resources in library collections grows, libraries have
increasing difficulty complying with the widely differing licence terms
applied to resources by their
creators and publishers. The ability to express these terms in a
standard XML
format, link them to digital resources and communicate them to users
has
become a pressing need with benefits to both publishers and libraries.
EDItEUR is developing standards for the
communication of licensing terms, ONIX
for Licensing Terms, building
on the work of the Digital Libraries Federation's Electronic
Resource Management Initiative (ERMI)
and the joint EDItEUR / NISO work on ONIX
for Serials,
and with initial funding contributions from the UK Publishers Licensing
Society (PLS) and the Joint
Information
Systems Committee (JISC).
The
first manifestation of ONIX for Licensing Terms will be ONIX for
Publications Licenses (ONIX-PL – formerly referred to as
“ONIX for Publisher Licenses”). The change of name
reflects the fact that the standard is intended to serve the interests
of all parties in the licensing chain. ONIX-PL is an XML format
for the communication of license terms in a structured and
substantially encoded form.
ONIX-PL format
specification (PDF)
The
most recent published draft (2 March 2007) of the ONIX-PL format
specification can be viewed and downloaded here. The format is
still under development, but substantial and rapid progress is now
being made, with the aim of reaching a stable first version in Spring 2008. However, at this stage all documentation
must be regarded as provisional. It is made available for
information and comment, and not to be used for any other purpose.
ONIX-PL mappings of
JISC licences
ONIX-PL mappings of the JISC model licenses, funded by JISC as a
project under phase 2 of the PALS Metadata and Interoperability
Programme
Background to the
development of ONIX-PL
Other documents relating to earlier stages of the development of
ONIX-PL can be accessed on a separate page.
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