ONIX for OA BooksOpen Access Books and the Supply Chain
Graham Bell
EDItEUR
London, 1st–2nd July 2013
Graham Bell
Thank you to JISC Collections, the British Library and the event sponsors for the opportunity to address this conference
About EDItEUR
• not-for-profit membership organisation
• develops, supports and promotes metadata
and identification standards for the book,
e-book and serials supply chains
• based in London, with a global membership
of publishers, distributors, wholesalers,
subscription agents, retailers, libraries,
system vendors, rights organizations and
trade associations
• acknowledged centre of expertise on
standards and metadata for the industry
Graham Bell
EDItEUR is a very small and unique member-funded organisation bringing together experts in metadata, publishing systems, technology and business
About ONIX
• the key international metadata standard for
the commercial book supply chain
• widely used throughout North America,
Europe, Japan, Russia, with early
implementations in China, India and parts
of the Arabic world
• developed originally by the AAP, but the
standard is now managed by EDItEUR
• EDItEUR membership supports development
About ONIX
• an open standard – documentation and XML
tools free of charge, no fees payable for use,
covered by highly-permissive licence and a
transparent governance process
• supports the business needs of a wide range
of stakeholders through entire supply chain
• two versions in current use – ONIX 2.1 and
ONIX 3.0
• 2.1 is more widely deployed in UK and US
• 3.0 enables richer description of e-books
Graham Bell
developed in 2000–2003
Graham Bell
developed 2009–2010. Any new implementations are recommended to be based around version 3.0
Graham Bell
ONIX is built into many off-the-shelf publishing and product management applications, from those systems used by the big six trade publishers down to applications used by the smallest publishers and university presses
<Contributor>
<SequenceNumber>1</SequenceNumber>
<ContributorRole>A01</ContributorRole>
<NameIdentifier>
<NameIDType>16</NameIDType>
<IDValue>0000000116216947</IDValue>
</NameIdentifier>
<PersonNameInverted>Peach, Ceri
��������</PersonNameInverted>
<ProfessionalAffiliation>
<Affiliation>University of Oxford</Affiliation>
����</ProfessionalAffiliation>
</Contributor>
3.0
Graham Bell
Here’s what a small chunk of ONIX normally looks like. You’ll see it’s XML based, and the flash in the corner indicates it is ONIX 3.0. ONIX 2.1 has a different but largely equivalent structure. – in this case, the information is about the authorship of a book written by Prof. Ceri Peach. The role code A01 is taken from a controlled vocabulary, known as a 'codelist' in ONIX– here the author has an identifier too. The ID is an ISNI, but it could equally be an ORCID (code 21) or anything else – and there are other attributes that can be linked to an author, like dates of birth or death, places, a biographical note and as in this case, affiliations to particular institutions
Issues for OA monographs
• product identification and reporting
• crediting funders
• treat funders like publishers, not like authors
• links to licences
• could be CC, or might be a bespoke licence
• free of charge products
• links between e-book and print versions
Graham Bell
Of course, almost everything about an OA monograph is the same as any other monographic work – or more specifically, any other monographic product. ONIX always describes a 'product', and isn’t quite the same as a library record
Graham Bell
But the previous presentation by Adam Purser pointed out some of the issues that surround how to describe OA monographs in ONIX, some of the ways in which OA monographs are different from other products – and some of these require tiny little extensions to ONIX
<ProductIdentifier>
<ProductIDType>15</ProductIDType>
<IDValue>9780007120765</IDValue>
</ProductIdentifier>
Graham Bell
Product identification for OA books is EXACTLY the same as for any other book – use an ISBN – best advice, from the International ISBN Agency, from BIC (the UK body for the book supply chain), from BISG (its US equivalent) and from EDItEUR is to use a different ISBN for each different e-book file format, so the PDF and the EPUB and ideally also the Amazon MOBI format are all separately identifiable – allows everyone in the supply chain to use their existing identification, reporting and analysis tools
<Publisher>
<PublishingRole>01</PublishingRole>
<PublisherName>Springer</PublisherName>
</Publisher>
<Publisher>
<PublishingRole>16</PublishingRole>
<PublisherName>Wellcome Trust</PublisherName>
</Publisher>
Graham Bell
Second, funders. These are treated as a type of publisher (not as a type of author) – this is how a publisher is named, and ONIX already allows for co-publishers, so it’s just a matter of identifying the new role of the funder
Graham Bell
New role codes can separate funders which have paid publication fees from funders which have paid for the underlying research (code 16 means they paid for both) – this is mostly how we extend ONIX, by adding to the controlled vocabularies (there is an established quarterly revision process)
<SupportingResource>
<ResourceContentType>99</ResourceContentType>
<ContentAudience>00</ContentAudience>
<ResourceMode>04</ResourceMode>
<ResourceVersion>
<ResourceForm>01</ResourceForm>
<ResourceLink>http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_GB</ResourceLink>
</ResourceVersion>
</SupportingResource>
3.0
Graham Bell
Licences are critical to OA publishing, and it’s important for the eventual user of the published monograph to be able to find out the exact limitations on what they can do with the text- new code 99 allows inclusion of a URL pointing to the licence
Graham Bell
Of course, not everyone will use a Creative Commons licence, as - for example - they don’t include warranties about the inclusion of material over which third parties hold rights
<UnpricedItemType>01</UnpricedItemType>
Graham Bell
Free of charge products aren’t really a problem to publishers, as they are already featured in ONIX– but they are unusual in the supply chain, and retailers will have to treat them carefully
<RelatedProduct>
<ProductRelationCode>27</ProductRelationCode>
<ProductIdentifier>
<ProductIDType>15</ProductIDType>
<IDValue>9780007120765</IDValue>
</ProductIdentifier>
</RelatedProduct>
Graham Bell
The need to link the electronic and printed products carrying the same content is of course a common business requirement, and is vital for the supply chain so that outlets can ensure they offer the full range of options to a potential reader. There's nothing new here... but it underlines the value of a strong, standard, unique identifier like the ISBN that is shared by the whole supply chain. – can link both ways – code 27 appears in the description of a print product and points to the e-book, and code 13 is its reciprocal that points from the e-book back to its print equivalent. Many other types of relationship can be expressed
Status of these changes
• the small number of necessary additions
described are currently ‘proposals’
• should be ratified by ONIX national groups,
added to next revision of the codelists and the
Implementation and Best Practice Guide
• discussing potential for simple ‘OA flag’ for
marketing purposes
• licence link is workable, but a better option
is to include with <UsageConstraints>
• may be added to ONIX 3.0.2 (~January 2014)
Graham Bell
But adding these to the standard isn’t the end of the process – there is a need to educate both publishers and resellers, and the changes need to be implemented in their IT systems
