ONIX: where it has come from
and where it is going
Brian Green, David Martin
The Book Business and International Information Standards
EDItEUR Seminar, Moscow, September 2007
What is EDItEUR?
• Founded 1992 in Amsterdam as a European book
trade EDI group
• Sponsored initially by the European federations of
publisher, bookseller and library associations
• Now 90 members from 17 countries, including
Australia, Canada, Japan, Russia, S Africa, USA
• Interests extending beyond EDI and book supply, to
embrace all forms of electronic communication in
the book and serials sectors
EDItEUR partners
• National groups, generally with interests in a
particular part of EDItEUR’s work, such as ONIX
• Numbering agencies: ISBN, ISSN, GS1 (formerly
EAN International)
• International DOI Foundation (IDF)
• ICEDIS: International Committee on EDI for Serials
(managed by EDItEUR)
• IFLA, IPA
• Publishers, booksellers, distributors, systems
vendors
EDItEUR standards
• EDIFACT trading message formats
• XML trading message formats
• ONIX product information standards
• ONIX for licensing terms
• Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
ONIX: the beginning
• The Association of American Publishers ONIX
(ONline Information eXchange) project began in
Autumn 1999, with the aim of providing a standard
format for publishers supplying product details,
particularly to Internet booksellers
• AAP published ONIX Version 1 Guidelines for
Information Exchange in January 2000, based
partly on earlier EDItEUR work
• With AAP agreement, EDItEUR published ONIX for
Books Release 1.0 in May 2000, and since then
has managed all ONIX development
ONIX today and tomorrow
• No longer just ONIX for Books:
• ONIX for Serials
• ONIX for registering identifiers
• ONIX for Licensing Terms
What is ONIX?
• A family of XML formats for communicating rich
metadata about books, serials and other published
media, using common data elements and
“composites”
• ONIX comprises XML Schemas, DTDs, code lists
and user documentation
• All developed and maintained by EDItEUR through
a growing number of partnerships with other
organisations
ONIX for Books
• Comprehensive bibliographic detail
• Text: descriptions, reviews, author biographies,
extracts
• Images: jackets, thumbnails, author photos
• Audio and video, website links
• Territorial rights
• Prices and availability in different markets
• Promotional campaign information
ONIX for Books
• Release 2.1 revision 03 is the current version
• Development is controlled by an International
Steering Committee representing...
• ...fifteen countries in which ONIX has been adopted
by the book trade: Australia, Canada, Germany,
Finland, France (with French-speaking Canada and
Belgium), Italy, Korea, Netherlands (with Flanders),
Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, UK, US
• Different countries are at different stages of
implementation
ONIX for Books
• US: over 150 publishers sending ONIX
feeds (October 2006)
• UK: 67 publishers (April 2007)
• Australia: 93 publishers (77% of the
industry) (October 2006)
• Canada: 128 publishers (April 2007)
• Norway: about 70% of publishing output in
ONIX in 2007
ONIX for Books
• With seven years experience, the time has come
for a full review of the standard
• The original requirement was for information about
“traditional” books and other physical products –
ONIX was designed for a physical supply chain,
which still accounts for most publishing revenues
• However, publishers are increasingly producing
digital content, and delivering it through different
channels
• ONIX must handle digital products as an integral
part of the format, not as an afterthought
ONIX for Books 3.0
• Sooner or later we need a major new Release 3.0
of ONIX for Books, not only embracing digital
content but also making many other improvements
• Currently, the Steering Committee is reviewing
whether to move straight to this new release, or
whether to make less extensive changes in a
Release 2.2, to allow more time to work out the
longer-term requirements
• A decision is expected at the Frankfurt Book Fair in
October
ONIX for Serials
• An EDItEUR – NISO collaboration through a Joint
Working Party (JWP)
• Three applications to date
• Serials Online Holdings (SOH): a format for
communication between “publication access
management systems” and libraries, to deliver
details of the electronic holdings to which the library
has access, and to populate resolution servers
• SOH Release 1.0 is published and in use: Release
1.1 is being prepared
ONIX for Serials
• Serials Products and Subscriptions (SPS):
(a) Communication of journal product catalogue
information through the supply chain from publisher
to subscription agent to library
(b) Communication of details of subscriptions held
by an individual library or a consortium
• SPS Release 0.91 is available on the EDItEUR
website: implementation is starting
• An extended Release 0.92 is being prepared
ONIX for Serials
• Serials Release Notification (SRN)
• A journal issue and article level format to be used
for communicating details of printed or electronic
content as it is released: two versions, one at issue
level, the other at article level
• Release 0.91 of the issue-level message is
published on the EDItEUR website
• A first release of the article-level message is being
prepared
ONIX for ID registration
• Standard identifiers (such as ISBN) need to be
associated with at least a minimum set of metadata
describing the thing that is identified
• This principle is recognised in all recent work on
identifier standards in ISO and elsewhere
• ONIX subsets can readily be defined as carriers for
identifier registration metadata
ONIX for ID registration
• DOI: a set of ONIX DOI registration formats has
been developed, for serial and non-serial items, as
works or as products, all available on the EDItEUR
website
• ISBN-13: the new standard defines a minimum
metadata requirement for ISBN agencies. An ONIX
format and schema for ISBN-13 registration has
been specified
• ISTC is expected to follow shortly
Licensing terms – the problem
• Growth of digital collections in libraries
• Need to automate management of digital resources
• Need to relate licences to institutional policies
• Variation in licensing terms
• Complexity of licence documentation
• Uncertainty at the point of use
• How could publishers and vendors help?
Deliver licence terms digitally
• Express licence terms in machine-readable form
• Communicate electronically from vendor to
subscriber
• Enable licence terms to be loaded directly into a
subscriber’s computer system
• But this needs a standard...
ONIX for Licensing Terms (OLT)
• Some work on the encoding of licence terms was
done as part of the US Electronic Resources
Management Initiative (ERMI) in 2004, but this fell
short of enabling a licence to be fully expressed
• EDItEUR undertook a proof of concept project in
2005, supported by the Publishers Licensing
Society and JISC
• Followed by the publication of a first draft of an
ONIX format for Publications Licences
The OLT framework
• OLT is a family of licence-related formats with a
shared underlying framework
• A data model for describing licensing “events”
• All terms defined in a structured OLT Dictionary that
will grow as new application needs are identified
• Individual formats specified – with appropriate
levels of specialization – as separate XML schemas
and documentation
OLT applications
• ONIX for Publications Licenses (ONIX-PL) for
communicating electronic expressions of
publisher/library licences
• ONIX for Repertoire, and ONIX for Distributions
Message formats for the International Federation of
Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFRRO)
• The Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP)
project is using OLT semantics to express
permissions for use of web content in a form that
can be interpreted by search engine crawlers
• Others to come
The digital future...
• The common thread running through ONIX
developments:
• ONIX Books 3.0 – enabling digital products to be
described alongside traditional publications
• ONIX for Serials – driven by the need for better
management of electronic journal collections
• ONIX for DOI registration – supporting the Digital
Object Identifier
• ONIX for Licensing Terms – enabling compliance
with licence permissions for digital content
EDItEUR contacts
• www.editeur.org
• Brian Green: brian@bic.org.uk
• David Martin: david@polecat.dircon.co.uk
• Francis Cave: francis@franciscave.com