ALCTS Metadata Interest Group

Presenter: Ben Showers, Head of Scholarly and Library Futures, Jisc

Title: Vocabularies for Open Access

Abstract: Open Access (OA) is an essential part of the scholarly communications ecosystem: From government mandates for publicly funded research through to the increasing reliance on open web searches to find and access scholarly content for students and researchers. For institutions and funding bodies, being able to track these research outputs is increasingly important, for institutional reputation, research enhancement and ensuring compliance with funding mandates. For students, researchers and the general public, it is important they are able to tell whether an article is available to read immediately, and, increasingly, what they can do with that article or content. The Jisc funded Vocabularies for Open Access (V4OA) project has been working with a wide variety of stakeholders such as NISO (National Information Standards Organisation), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), Society of College and National University Libraries (SCONUL) and United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories (UKCoRR) to try and achieve a consensus on key vocabularies related to OA. The intention is firstly that V4OA to be, or form part of a standard or recognised international best practice on the description of open access research outputs and secondly that that these agreed vocabularies will be incorporated into key information systems thus allowing institutions and funders to capture and assess the nature and scale of Open Access ‘transactions’ across the scholarly landscape.

Presenter: Nettie Lagace, Associate Director for Programs, National Information Standards Organization (NISO)

Title: Update on NISO's Open Access Metadata and Indicators Working Group

Abstract: The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Open Access Metadata and Indicators Working Group was chartered in March 2013 to develop protocols and mechanisms for transmitting the access status of scholarly works, such as individual articles. The intent of the group has been to develop a standardized set of metadata elements in order to share accessibility and potential re-use rights, to clarify an environment where it is currently very difficult for stakeholders (funders, authors, librarians and users) to determine whether a given article is compliant with conditions and policies. The area in which it has worked is a contentious one, with many differing opinions among stakeholders on what constitutes “open access.” These elements developed as part of the group’s recommendations that the elements be machine readable to enable systems to intake the data and re-use it in whatever form is appropriate for its own context.  The Working Group’s specification is expected to be finished with its public comment period and formally published in early 2014.