JISC

The aim of the PALS programmes is to stimulate collaboration between the publishing and academic communities and develop practical solutions that enable interoperability.

Background

JISC’s Information Environment (IE) will provide a more seamless environment for the academic community, allowing users to discover and use online resources more easily.  The IE is based on standards, protocols and techniques that allow online services to ‘work together’ in a secure way.  The many online services remain separate, but metadata about resources is exchanged between systems.   

This ‘interoperability’ of metadata across systems is a key principle of the IE.  The problem is how to achieve it in a practical way across different publisher and library systems.  The PALS Metadata and Interoperability working group recommended a practical approach.  They reasoned that a good starting point was to get publishers and libraries working together using the standards that would enable interoperability.  As a result, the JISC established the PALS Metadata and Interoperability programmes (the PALS programmes for short).  The PALS Metadata and Interoperability group acts as an advisory group for these programmes.

Aims and Objectives

The aim of the PALS programmes is to stimulate collaboration between the publishing and academic communities and develop practical solutions that enable interoperability.  Objectives are to:  

• Explore how publishers can participate in the Information Environment by using IE standards, e.g. OAI, RSS, Z39.50, OpenURL, and DOI
• Explore how JISC can integrate publisher-initiated standards into the IE
• Develop tools and guidelines to simplify the adoption of metadata and interoperability standards.

 If these aims and objectives are achieved, there should be benefits on all sides – more seamless discovery and access for users, increased visibility of a publisher’s online resources, and in principle greater use.  So perhaps an additional objective of the PALS programmes is to assess the benefits of using metadata and interoperability standards and the issues associated with implementation.

The PALS Programmes

To date there have been two PALS programmes.  Each has involved a small number of short projects where publishers work with the academic community to use metadata and interoperability standards, tackle implementation issues, and explore the potential benefits.   

• PALS 1 (2003-04)  – The first programme focused on IE standards like OAI-PMH, RSS and DOIs and resulted in a range of reports, case-studies and demonstrators.
• PALS 2 (2005-06)  – The second programme went beyond simply ‘exploring the issues’.  The focus was on using standards in innovative ways, and creating practical tools and guidelines for the community to make adopting standards easier.  The range of standards used was also broader, including publisher-initiated standards like ONIX for Serials and ONIX for Licensing Terms, and jointly developed standards like COUNTER.

The Future

Understanding the benefits will be important in stimulating the wider take-up of standards.  In December 2006, the JISC held a seminar, Discovery and Access: Standards and the Information Chain, to consult with the community about the future.  The seminar reviewed interoperability standards from publisher, library, and other stakeholder perspectives, identified gaps and issues that should be addressed, and highlighted areas for future work.  Presentations given are posted on the seminar website, along with a summary of the seminar and discussion. 

The gaps and issues identified at the seminar may result in further initiatives under the PALS banner.  This site will be updated as decisions are taken and any announcements made