JISC

Within the academic community, there is a desire on the part of users of resources (and of the institutions within which those users work or study) to be compliant with terms established by rights holders. As the medium for the distribution of resources moves increasingly from physical copies to the network, the need for users to know what permissions attach to the access and use of any particular resource becomes increasingly pressing due to considerable differentiation between licence terms. This is amplified by the increasing diversity of resource providers: organisations and individuals are developing resources that were once the preserve of commercial enterprises, with different objectives and constraints when it comes to making them available. Some resources are available under the terms of a Creative Commons licence; others under stricter commercial terms. It is difficult or impossible for users to discover for themselves the terms that apply to a particular resource.

The solution lies in the establishment of mechanisms by which key elements of licences can be made available so that a user can be provided with the most significant elements of licence information at the point of use – those that relate to permitted access and use. This needs to happen without additional human intervention; those significant licence terms must be machine interpretable. A licence registry (or many licence registries, in a more distributed model) is an essential element in the technical architecture necessary to support such functionality

The project will establish the user requirements for a License Registry able to integrate effectively with jisc information environment and then to design, build, test and deploy a pilot based on the requirements. The registry will enable key elements of licenses to be made available so that a user can be provided with license information at the point of use without additional human intervention. A license registry is an essential element in the technical architecture necessary to support such functionality. The registry proposed will enable those significant license terms to be made machine interpretable.

The project will be managed by

• University of Loughborough

in association with

• Rightscom Ltd
• EDITEUR
• Naomi Korn
• Open University
• Oxford University press.