Working Group Connection, September 2022: projects via Information Policy & Analysis Topic Committee
Co-chairs of the IPA topic committee are: Athena Hoeppner (University of Central Florida) and Jack Maness (University of Denver).
Content Platform Migrations Working Group
Co-chairs: Athena Hoeppner (University of Central Florida); Kimberly Steinle (Duke University Press)
Working Group Web page
Publication: RP-38-2021, Content Platform Migrations
NISO published this recommended practice in November 2021. This effort focused on improving communications between stakeholders when a publisher moves content from one hosting platform to another. The document lists the core concepts, approaches, and tasks to facilitate a successful migration with minimal disruption to the libraries and other vendors affected, as well as the publisher itself and the content platform vendors. Ultimately, end users enjoy the most benefit from stakeholder adoption of the principles outlined in the Recommended Practice, as their access to necessary content is unimpeded.
The main document provides context, descriptions, and definitions. Each section concludes with recommendations related to each topic, with bulleted lists of example tasks for each stakeholder group. The recommendations are also provided as a Checklist in a spreadsheet, so they can be sorted, filtered, and customized. Both versions of the Recommendations identify the stakeholder that is likely to have responsibility for a given task.
NISO is forming a Standing Committee to take over the work of promotion and support of the Recommended Practice. If you are interested in participating, please contact Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Executive Director.
SeamlessAccess
NISO provides support and expertise to the SeamlessAccess project in the form of leadership on several working groups and membership on the governance committee of the project. SeamlessAccess is designed to enable a more streamlined access experience for federated authentication across scholarly and research information infrastructures, and works to make all of federated authentication a better experience for users.
Since our last update, SeamlessAccess work has included:
A presentation by Heather Flanagan, Tim Lloyd, and our own Todd Carpenter at the SSP conference about the fundamental shift taking place in access to resources online.
Over the next couple of months, SeamlessAccess will also be featured at the 2022 STM conference in October, and at the Charleston Conference in November.
The WAYF Entry Disambiguation Working Group has published its final recommendations on how to approach the problem of multiple, similar entries in Where Are You From screens in federated authentication workflows that builds on the earlier white paper.
Significant work has been done in the service to allow for internationalization and translation into a variety of languages. The technical infrastructure was updated in early Spring to allow for translation, and currently the service is available in English, Spanish, and Swedish. Additional languages can be added by the community via the SeamlessAccess github repository.
And finally, the summer brought two more scholarly publishers into SeamlessAccess implementations, with both Cambridge University Press and De Gruyter implementing the service, bringing the total implementation count to nineteen unique companies.
SERU (Shared E-Resource Understanding) Standing Committee
SERU Standing Committee Web page
Publication: SERU Recommended Practice (NISO RP-7-2012)
The SERU Recommended Practice was updated in 2012 to be more flexible for use with online products beyond e-journals, and is supported by its Standing Committee who works to publicize SERU and educate libraries and publishers via direct contacts and public presentations at industry conferences. The SERU website pages are available to help publishers and libraries understand and use the SERU material and NISO continues to add more libraries and publishers to the SERU Registry upon request.
SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) Standing Committee
Co-chairs: James Van Mil (University of Cincinnati), Oliver Pesch (EBSCO Information Services)
SUSHI Standing Committee Web page
Publications: SUSHI standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2014)
COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile (NISO RP-14-2012)
This Standing Committee provides maintenance and support for ANSI/NISO Z39.93, The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol, and acts as the maintenance group for the COUNTER schema by providing recommendations to COUNTER and making changes to the COUNTER XML schemas (as approved by COUNTER). When COUNTER 4 was released it necessitated relevant changes to the SUSHI schema and applicable updates to the SUSHI workroom pages. More recently, the SUSHI Standing Committee discussed the impact of the COUNTER 5 Code of Practice on its material; for example, the possible use of multiple schemas to support various aspects of COUNTER and/or the adoption of SUSHI-Lite as a mechanism for transfer of data.
Note that the SUSHI Server Registry which was hosted on the NISO SUSHI site has been incorporated into the overall COUNTER Registry of Compliance. The Standing Committee is also working to ensure that SUSHI support materials are congruent with USUS, the community web site.
Transfer Standing Committee
TRANSFER logo
Co-chairs: Sophia Anderton (BJU International), Linda Wobbe (SCELC)
Transfer Standing Committee Web page
Publication: Transfer Recommended Practice (NISO RP-24-2019)
The most recent version of the Transfer Code of Practice, Version 4 was published in 2019. This Code of Practice helps publishers ensure that content remains accessible by readers and librarians when a journal or set of journals is transferred between parties, and supports a smooth process with minimal disruption. Publishers are asked to endorse the Code and to abide by its principles wherever it is commercially reasonable to do so. Supporting publishers are included in a list of endorsers on the Transfer website. The Transfer Alerting Service, sponsored by the ISSN Agency, facilitates communication about journal transfers and includes a database where details about transfers can be searched.
The members of the Transfer Standing Committee, who meet bi-monthly, are responsible for encouraging publisher endorsement and planning outreach, education and training activities. The Standing Committee has been immersed this year to discussions around the next version of Transfer, reviewing new use scenarios--such as those involving open access details, such as transformative agreements--and inspecting Transfer elements and procedures that may need to be updated.
Nettie Lagace presented the effort at the NISO Update at ALA in June (on behalf of Regina Reynolds) and Linda Wobbe plans to provide an update at the Charleston Conference in November.
Z39.7 Data Dictionary Standing Committee
Co-chairs: Martha Kyrillidou (QualityMetrics), Joe Zucca (University of Pennsylvania)
Z39.7 Standing Committee
The purpose of ANSI/NISO Z39.7-2013 Information Services and Use: Metrics & Statistics for Libraries and Information Providers - Data Dictionary is to assist the information community by indicating and defining useful quantifiable information to measure the resources and performance of libraries and to provide a body of valid and comparable data on American libraries. It identifies standard definitions, methods, and practices relevant to library statistics activities in the United States. Any user of the online standard may submit suggested changes which are then reviewed by the Standing Committee during its conference calls. As part of its work, the Standing Committee scans and reviews the statistical survey landscape and examines other assessment efforts--including use of particular vocabularies--in the community for effects on the Data Dictionary.
Most recently, the Z39.7 Standing Committee has just finalized a new draft of the standard. It is expected that this updated draft will be made available to NISO Voting Members for their approval in the coming months. After subsequent ANSI approval, it is hoped that the updated standard will be published this year. In the meantime, the Standing Committee has assembled resources for a separate appendix to the standard which will capture ongoing work (projects and tools) related to assessment, and has been discussing recent meetings of interest and updates to various industry surveys.
Nettie Lagace presented the effort at the NISO Update at ALA in June (Martha Kyrillidou).
New Project: Unique Electronic Resource Package Identifiers
Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members
E-resources are frequently purchased as packages, which can range in size from a handful of titles to hundreds of thousands. Currently, these packages can only be identified by their name in the supply chain, within elements such as invoices, publisher websites, knowledge bases, etc. However, names are inherently ambiguous, so this causes problems that affect all stakeholders—libraries, content providers and platforms, knowledge base providers, and even users.
The NISO Unique Electronic Resource Package Identifiers Working Group will evaluate and create recommendations for a unique identifier to enable disambiguation between packages, which can be used across the supply chain. This identifier will allow all stakeholders to streamline and simplify their processes, and to more easily track changes. It will also provide libraries with clear information about which titles a package contains, enabling them, for example, to manage claims when journals move between publishers.
NISO expects to convene the working group this fall. For more information contact Nettie Lagace.