A publisher’s perspective on

standards

Discovery and Access: Standards and the Information Chain

7 December 2006Cliff Morgan, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Publishers are interested in …

Standards that help customers to:• Discover material• Link to it• Buy it• Know what they can do with it• Be kept up to date about it• Manage their records

• Use the material• Assess its value• Preserve it

Discover materialMetadata:• Dublin Core – basis of so many other m/data sets but not used much in raw form by publishers• dcterms (TMSFKADCQ) doesn’t seem to have had much take-up • OAI-PMH – based on DC

Publishers tend not to be involved with:• Z39.50• METS • MODS• Metasearch

• Enhances access to e-print archives• Neutral regarding business model• Authors not using much• Publishers could target harvesters• ORE (Object Reuse and Exchange) – brought to you by the same people• Allows distributed repositories to exchange info about their constituent digital objects

Link to material• CrossRef – based on m/data and id (DOI) standards • Gets a lot of publisher support – 2287 members• Many publishers also OpenURL compliant• Although probably just in its 0.1 version rather than the NISO standard 1.0

Buy material

• Product identifiers – ISBN, ISSN• Trading product metadata – ONIX• EDI standards• Interested in any standards that support e-commerce and microtransactions

Know what can be done with material

• RELs (Rights Expression Languages): XrML; ODRL• Don’t think many publishers using • ONIX for Licensing Terms – a standard syntax for expressing T&Cs (not for standardising the T&Cs themselves)• Shibboleth – Attribute Release Policy• Automated Content Access Protocol

Be kept up to date about material

• RSS• But beware which version• 1.0 is RDF Site Summary• 2.0 is Really Simple Syndication• 2.0 is not a development of 1.0• Completely different standards• 2.0 is simpler than 1.0 but less flexible• “Urchin” open-source RSS aggregator developed by NPG (PALS project)

Manage library records

• MARC (but only if mapping to our m/data sets – publishers aren’t MARC experts)• ONIX for Serials (SPS, SOH and SRN)

Use material

• Formats – text PDF, HTML, XML ; graphics (GIF, JPEG, PNG, SVG); multimedia (MPEG)• E-book formats (Mobipocket)• DTDs – e.g. NLM becoming the de facto standard

Assess the value of material

• Usage stats: COUNTER• SUSHI for aggregated stats• “Usage Factor” – like the IF

Preserve material• OAIS; CEDARS• But publishers don’t really get into • They preserve their own material but aren’t experts on ingestion, migration, emulation, etc.• Working with the BL on legal deposit

How do publishers assess?

• Will it mean more income (sell more units or charge more for each unit)?• Will it reduce costs?• Will it allow me to make a better product or service (even if can’t charge more)?• Will it help to stimulate the market generally?

• Who’s behind the standard?• How likely is take-up?• Should I be a spectator or participant?• Backing horses – what’s the formbook?

Some examples• Well established and managed – ISBN, ISSN, CrossRef, ONIX• Becoming established – ONIX for Serials• Relatively low take-up, may blossom – OAI-PMH, OpenURL• Ones that never really got off the ground – BICI (stillborn), ISTC (no RA)• Early days – Shibboleth, ACAP, ORE, OLT

Conclusions• Some standards are no brainers• Some need assessing re specific and general business impact• Some standards compete• Some never get anywhere (even if agreed need)• They are always a compromise