JISC

These programmes on metadata and interoperability standards are relevant to all stakeholders in the information chain, e.g. publishers, intermediaries, libraries, and their solutions vendors.  As with many JISC programmes, there is ‘something for everyone’, but stakeholders will probably be more interested in some projects than others.  Below is a quick guide to the themes and projects that are likely to interest different stakeholders.

Publishers

The new ONIX for Licensing Terms (OLT) standard is a framework for creating licences in XML format so the licence terms can be communicated to users.  This should result in improved compliance with licence terms.  Two projects have done the groundwork for implementing OLT in a practical way and are developing tools for creating XML licences easily.  See Electronic Expression of Licensing Terms for more details.

The COUNTER Filter project developed a ‘unique article’ filter to compensate for inflation of usage statistics caused by certain vendor interfaces and will recommend that publishers use the filter.  See Usage Statistics to find out how the filter was developed and works.  The project also did a survey of current vendor practice on implementing unique article identifiers.  See Article Identifiers for the key finding and the project’s recommendations.

Publishers are increasingly using RSS news feeds or ‘web feeds’ to alert customers about new developments, e.g. press releases, jobs, podcasts, or tables of contents for their journals.  Three projects showed how publishers can use RSS and developed useful tools to make it easy.  EEVL developed a primer for publishers explaining RSS news feeds, Nature developed a tool for managing feeds from different sources, and Emerald used RSS to send table of contents data to library catalogues.  See RSS News Feeds for Alerting for more details.

Social Bookmarking services allow users to create a personal collection of bookmarks, organise that collection using ‘tags’, and share their tags with other users.  This can aid discovery, as one user can see what e-journals or e-books other users have assigned to a relevant tag – resources they might not know about.  The page on  Social Bookmarking describes Nature’s project to integrated repositories running EPrints software with social bookmarking services like del.icio.us and Connotea.

Publishers can use the OAI-PMH standard to disclose their metadata to portals and search engines.  Two projects worked with publishers to demonstrate how this can be done.  One used the standard approach of building an OAI-compliant repository, and the other tried out a low-tech approach that may be of interest to small publishers with limited technical capabilities.  See Disclosing Journals using OAI for more details.

Libraries

As noted above, the ONIX for Licensing Terms (OLT) standard is a framework for creating licences in XML format.  When installed in the library’s ERM system, the licence terms are actionable and can be communicated to users.  The projects on Electronic Expression of Licensing Terms explored the potential benefits with publishers and libraries and are developing tools for creating XML licences easily.  A clear benefit for both publishers and libraries is improved compliance with licence terms.  However, libraries also see benefits in terms of managing their licences and negotiating agreements.

COUNTER is always seeking to improve the quality of the statistics generated according to its Codes of Practice.  There was concern that a vendor’s interface could inflate usage statistics, e.g. if it required users to view an HTML article before viewing the PDF.  The COUNTER Filter project developed a ‘ unique article’ filter for vendors to use.  This will result in a new metric – the number of successful unique article requests in a session.  See  Usage Statistics for more details.

OPACs are an important way to disclose e-resources to users.  Three projects explored how to add data to OPACs using standards to automate processes and minimise the time and effort involved.  Each focused on adding different types of data but each created MARC21 records.  AIMSS used ONIX for Serials (Serials Online Holdings) to update e-journals holdings, TOCRoSS used RSS to add table of contents data for e-journals, and TIME used a metadata conversion engine to create records for e-books.  See Library Catalogues for more details.

Libraries with institutional repositories will be interested in Nature’s project on social bookmarking.  Nature developed a Tagging Tool that enables repositories running EPrints software to integrate with social bookmarking services like del.icio.us and Connotea.  This allows users to take advantage of social bookmarking features without leaving the repository environment.  See  Social Bookmarking for more details.

Intermediaries and Solutions Vendors

The sections above indicate the themes and projects that are most relevant to publishers and libraries.  In some cases publishers or libraries may find the work interesting but may look to intermediaries and solutions vendors to help enable them to implement key standards.  For example, libraries may expect vendors that supply ERM systems to implement ONIX for Licensing Terms or vendors that supply PAMS to implement ONIX for Serials SOH.  See Electronic Expression of Licensing Terms and Library Catalogues for more details.  Intermediaries that supply usage statistics will be interested in the COUNTER Filter project (see Usage Statistics).  Those that provide services to publishers may be interested in Disclosing Journals using OAI.

Another area that may be of interest to intermediaries and solutions vendors is metadata transformation.  Two projects did interesting work in this area.  The TIME project developed a testbed ‘engine’ to transform metadata from one format to another, via a generic format.  The aim of the project was to facilitate cataloguing of e-books, but the approach is applicable to other areas.  Input/output formats for the project included ONIX for Books, Dublin Core, and MARC, and IEEE LOM.  The metadata+ project also involved metadata mapping and output formats included MODS, IEEE LOM, and SCORM.  See Metadata Mapping for more details.