On February 10, 2020, Open Discovery Initiative Standing Committee co-chairs Rachel Kessler and Laura Morse joined NISO Associate Executive Director Nettie Lagace for a conversation about the revised Recommended Practice, which is now available in draft form for public comment. NOTE:The comment period has been extended to Sunday, March 15.
The Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) Recommended Practice defines best practices for the new generation of library discovery services that are based on indexed search. These discovery services are primarily based upon indexes derived from journals, ebooks and other electronic information of a scholarly nature. The content comes from a range of information providers and products--commercial, open access, institutional, etc. Given the growing interest and activity in the interactions between information providers and discovery services, a more standard set of practices is required for the ways that content is represented in discovery services and for the interactions between the creators of these services and the information providers whose resources they represent.
The Recommended Practice includes guidelines to content providers on disclosure of level of participation, the minimum set of metadata elements provided for indexing, linking practices, and technical formats. Recommendations for discovery service providers address content listings, linking practices, file formats and methods of transfer to be supported, and usage statistics. The document also provides background information on the evolution of discovery and delivery technology and a standard set of terminology and definitions for this technology area.
