JISC

ONIX for Licensing Terms is a new standard for expressing licences electronically so the terms are actionable. Book Industry Communication, Wiley, Cranfield University, and Rightscom mapped the first publisher licence to the new ONIX-PL format, the Wiley InterScience Enhanced Access Licence for Academic Customers. In a follow-on extension, the project mapped the JISC Model Licences.

Full Project Title

Electronic Expression of Licensing Terms: XML Expression of a Publisher/Library Licence

Summary 

Libraries sign licence agreements for a wide range of digital resources, and the terms contained in these agreements can vary widely.  In order for libraries to comply with the licences, they need to be able to communicate the licence terms to their users, so users know what they can do when they use the resources.  This is all difficult if paper licence agreements are stored in file cabinets.  What is needed is the ability to express licence terms electronically so that the terms are actionable. 

EDItEUR has been developing ONIX for Licensing Terms (OLT) to fill this gap.  It is envisaged that OLT will work in the following way.  A given licence agreed by a publisher and library is expressed in ONIX Publications Licence format (ONIX-PL), and the licence terms are defined in a data dictionary.  The licence is sent to the library’s Electronic Resource Management (ERM) system as an XML message.  The ERM system looks after user authentication and links the actionable licence terms to the relevant resources.  When users access the resources, they are then informed about the usage terms. 

Two PALS 2 projects focused on implementing OLT in a practical way.  This first project created the first OLT licence.  Book Industry Communication (BIC), Wiley, CranfieldUniversity, and Rightscom collaborated to develop an XML version of a real publisher’s licence, the Wiley InterScience Enhanced Access Licence for Academic Customers.  The project involved mapping the licence to ONIX-PL format, agreeing on which licence terms should be actionable and their precise semantic meaning.  It resulted in a detailed specification for the ONIX-PL format, the first release of the OLT Dictionary, and an ONIX-PL expression of the Wiley licence. 

The project has confirmed that the full detail of a publisher-library licence can be expressed in a structured and machine-actionable form as part of the standard XML message.  It proposed that licence terms which are not actionable should be included as unstructured citations, and that data like publications covered by the licence should be held in a separate document, e.g. in ONIX for Serials SOH format.  The team feel that communicating licensing terms in this standard automated form will dramatically improve the management of electronic resources in libraries and allow users improved access to those resources. 

For OLT to be used on a wide scale, tools will be needed to facilitate mapping licences into ONIX-PL format. A related PALS 2 project (Specifying Publisher Tools and Library Benefits) specified the tools and developed a fully functional prototype (OPLE, the ONIX-PL Editor).

It is envisaged that the OPLE editing tool will work with templates. There would be 'public' templates for model licences like the JISC Model Licences, and these would be freely available for anyone to use. There would also be 'private' templates, like the templates a given publisher creates for its publications. In either case, a template can be used to create the specific XML licence agreed with a library (or consortium) and actioned in the library ERM. 

Extension: Mapping the JISC Model Licences

JISC felt that the PALS 2 work on OLT was so promising that it granted both project extensions. The extension enabled this project to map the JISC Model Licences to ONIX-PL format. The mappings cover the JISC Model Licences for electronic journals (NESLi2), datasets, and e-books. 

Each model licence applies to a whole class of agreements for online journals (NESLi2), datasets or e-books. When JISC Collections enters into an agreement with a publisher for the supply of one of these types of material to subscribing institutions, the appropriate model is used as the basis for a licence or sub-licence 'template' that will be used with each subscriber. Thus there are three levels of licence document: the model licence, which is used as the basis for a publisher-specific template, which is used as the basis for individual subscriber licences. The mapping project has been concerned only with the model licence or sub-licence, and not with any JISC-publisher agreements, publisher-specific templates or subscriber licences.

The NESLi2 mapping (from which the other two are derived) will be installed in the OPLE editing tool and effectively it is the first template available for use with the tools. 

Outcomes

The project has confirmed that the full detail of a publisher-library licence can be expressed in a structured and machine-actionable form as part of the standard XML message. The project has mapped the first publisher licence and the JISC Model Licences to ONIX-PL format.

As a direct result of this project, JISC will now be able to map all their individual licences into the ONIX-PL format and make them available to libraries in a standard machine-readable form. This work will result in increased visibility for ONIX for Licensing Terms and the ONIX-PL format, and should act as an incentive for the major providers of ERM systems to implement it.

Outputs

Reports  

The project’s Final Report (PDF) to JISC explains the project work in detail.  It explains ONIX for Licensing, how the Wiley licence was mapped, and how the project partners reached agreement on issues like which terms should be included in the mapping and their semantic meaning.  The six appendixes are listed here in numerical order and under the relevant headings below. 

• Appendix 1 (PDF) – Report of Semantics Workshop 
• Appendix 2 (PDF) – ONIX-PL Representation of Wiley Licence
• Appendix 3 (PDF) – Full Text of Wiley Licence
• Appendix 4 (XML) – ONIX-PL Representation of Wiley Licence as XML File
• Appendix 5 (PDF) – Controlled Values from OLT Dictionary used in Wiley Licence
• Appendix 6 (PDF) – Specification of ONIX-PL Format.

The Final Report on the JISC Model Licences (Word) extension explains the work to map the three model licences.  The mappings are covered under Mappings below.

Specifications 

The specifications for the ONIX-PL format are below.  They will evolve as more licences are mapped to ONIX-PL format and more terms are added to the OLT dictionary. The most up-to-date specifications can be found on the ONIX for Licensing web page.

• Specification of ONIX-PL Format (Appendix 6 (PDF) of final report)
• Controlled Values from OLT Dictionary used in Wiley Licence (Appendix 5 (PDF) of final report).

Mappings for Wiley Licence

The mappings and associated documents for the Wiley licence are: 

• ONIX-PL Representation of Wiley Licence (Appendix 2 (PDF) of final report)
• ONIX-PL Representation of Wiley Licence as XML File (Appendix 4 (XML) of final report)
• Full Text of Wiley Licence (for reference) (Appendix 3 (PDF) of final report)
• Controlled Values from OLT Dictionary used in Wiley Licence (Appendix 5 (PDF) of final report).

Mappings for JISC Model Licences

The three mappings have been delivered in the form of six documents, two for each mapping. The first document in each case carries the complete text of the model licence concerned, annotated to explain how each clause has been expressed in the mapping. The second document is the XML expression, line-numbered so that it can be cross-referenced from the mapping notes.

• NESLi2 – Mapping Notes  (PDF)
• NESLi2 – XML Expression  (PDF)
• Ebooks – Mapping Notes  (PDF)
• Ebooks – XML Expression  (PDF)
• Dataset – Mapping Notes  (PDF)
• Dataset – XML Expression  (PDF)

 Events 

• Semantics workshop – A brief summary of the workshop held to agree on semantics of the Wiley licence.  The report and supporting documents are zipped as Appendix 1 of the final report.
• Seminar on Electronic Expression of Licensing Terms, London, 5 July 2006 – This half-day seminar was held to present ONIX for Licensing Terms and results of the two JISC projects to publishers and Librarians.  The presentations can be found at http://www.editeur.org/onix_licensing.html

Publications 

• Francis Cave, Brian Green and David Martin, ONIX for Licensing Terms: Standards for the Electronic Communication of Usage Terms, Ariadne, January 2007, Issue 50 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue50/green-et-al/

Presentations

• Brian Green, ONIX for Licensing Terms, presentation at Discovery and Access: Standards and the Information Chain, London, 7 December 2006: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/events/pals-2006/

Further Information 

• ONIX for Licensing Terms: http://www.editeur.org/onix_licensing.html
• PALS 2 project page: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_pals2/project_onixlt1.aspx
• Project contact: Brian Green, EDItEUR, email: brian@bic.org.uk