Working Group Connection, April 2026: Projects via Information Discovery & Interchange Topic Committee

Co-chair of the IDI Topic Committee is: Mark Dehmlow (University of Notre Dame).

Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CREC)

Co-chairs: Caitlin Bakker (University of Regina), Maria Zalm (Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Standing Committee web page
Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members
Publication: CREC Recommended Practice (NISO RP-45-2024)

Retracted research is published work that is withdrawn, removed, or otherwise invalidated from the scientific and scholarly record. Although relatively rare, retracted research—including unsupported or fabricated data, fundamental errors, and unreproducible results—can be inadvertently propagated within the digital scholarly record through citations. The CREC Recommended Practice is intended to help address this problem, by clearly identifying parties involved in the retraction process, along with their responsibilities, actions, notifications, and the metadata necessary to communicate retracted research. CREC is an output of both the recent Sloan Foundation-funded project, Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science (RISRS) and the 2021 NISO Plus conference, where this topic was one of three highlighted by attendees as of highest importance. CREC will be consistent with existing guidelines, such as those published by the Council on Publishing Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Council of Science Editors (CSE). 

The NISO CREC Recommended Practice was published in June 2024. The primary aim of the Recommended Practice is to establish best practices for metadata creation, transfer, and display for both the original publication and the statement of retraction, removal, or EoC, with the goal of facilitating the timely and efficient communication of information to all relevant stakeholders. 

The NISO CREC Standing Committee began meeting in June 2025. The committee has been reviewing areas for further consideration identified during the development of the Recommended Practice. Discussions have focused on prioritizing these items for potential inclusion in an upcoming revision of the document or integration into training materials. The Standing Committee has categorized these items into relevant subject areas and has established four subgroups: Content Policy and Taxonomy, Technical Implementation and Metadata, User-facing Presentation and Guidance, and Communications and Marketing. Each subgroup is set to meet monthly.

The CREC Communications and Marketing subgroup has been developing a strategy to communicate the value of adopting the CREC Recommended Practice to stakeholders and to grow the Standing Committee's web presence. 

Knowledge Bases And Related Tools (KBART) Standing Committee

Co-chairs: Robert Heaton (EBSCO), Noah Levin (Springer Publishing)
Contact KBART Chairs for endorsement approval
KBART Web Pages
Publication: Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) Recommended Practice (NISO RP-9-2014)

KBART is a NISO Recommended Practice that facilitates the transfer of holdings metadata from content providers to knowledge base suppliers and libraries. Knowledge bases are widely used to support library link resolvers and electronic resource management systems. The first iteration of the KBART Recommended Practice, which focused on journal holdings, was published in 2010; a 2014 "Phase II" revision extended support to metadata for e-books, conference proceedings, consortial subscriptions and some open access publications. Starting in early 2020 the KBART Standing Committee has been hard at work on research and actions around elements of its Phase III work with subgroups addressing areas of work such as clarifying the recommendations, revamping the mission statement, determining new types of material to support (such as video) and thus any required new fields, and creating a new file guide.  The endorsement process continues as approved providers are added to the KBART Registry, although a new validator application under development may help speed this process further. 

From the Working Group: "One thing we keep in mind as we revise KBART, and which we like to remind others, is that KBART is not intended to provide comprehensive descriptive metadata for content, a task more suited to MARC, for example. KBART aims to provide the metadata needed to identify the correct copy of an e-resource for linking purposes. At its core, KBART communicates holdings metadata."

The public comment period for the draft KBART Phase III Recommended Practice ran from September 25 to November 10, 2025. The draft of Phase III is available here, and the comments received can be viewed at this link. The KBART Standing Committee has been at work addressing the suggestions received during the review period and applying any necessary additions to the draft.

Co-chair Noah Levin, along with KBART Standing Committee members Jacqueline Whyte Appleby, Bobbi Patham, and Julie Zhu, spoke about the updates to KBART Phase III during the Seaspeak for E-Resources session at Charleston Conference 2025. Noah Levin also gave an update during the Working Group Update #1 session at NISO Plus 2026.

Enhancing KBART for Automated Exchange of Title Lists and Library Holdings

Co-chairs: Stephanie Doellinger, Oliver Pesch (EBSCO Information Services)
Publication: KBART Automation Recommended Practice (NISO RP-26-2019)
KBART Automation Working Group Web Page 

The KBART Automation Working Group’s output, the KBART Automation Recommended Practice (NISO RP-26-2019) was published in June 2019. This work extends the KBART Phase 2 Recommended Practice to provide technical instructions to facilitate the automatic transfer and retrieval of holdings data between content providers and institutional knowledge bases with the goal of automatically and regularly updating institutional activations and settings via an API. Included in the Recommended Practice are descriptions of data elements and file formats; options a content provider must provide to enable customers to access its holdings reports; expected API support that enables automated retrieval of reports; suggested license language and a discussion of data confidentiality; and description of additional elements and attribute values that can be included in the reports.

It is likely that there will be more resources to address further KBART Automation work once the KBART Standing Committee's efforts on KBART Phase III wrap up. 

NCIP (NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol) Standing Committee

NCIP Web Pages
NCIP Standing Committee
Publication: ANSI/NISO Z39.83-1-2012 (version 2.02), NISO Circulation Interchange - Part 1: Protocol (NCIP)
Publication: ANSI/NISO Z39.83-2-2012 (version 2.02), NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP) Part 2: Implementation Profile 1 

The latest version of NCIP, 2.02, was published in 2012. The Standing Committee meets periodically to review status of implementations and discuss other general business, such as additions to the NCIP website, implementor questions, and potential updates to the protocol. Input from the public is welcome. 

Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) Standing Committee

Co-chairs: Rachel Kessler (ProQuest), Ken Varnum (University of Michigan)
ODI Web Pages
Publication: ODI Recommended Practice (NISO RP-19-2020)

The newest version of the Open Discovery Initiative Recommended Practice was approved by NISO and published in June 2020. The updated ODI Recommended Practice provides a more detailed treatment of Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) content products, and supports better metadata sharing (including information about open access material) and record display, as well as improved tracking of usage statistics and authentication mechanisms. It also includes advice on systems, training, and communication for libraries that configure and upgrade their discovery systems. ODI's intent is to unify the community by encouraging dialogue among stakeholders and by increasing order within the industry by standardizing practices.

The ODI Standing Committee continues its focus on specific areas of work identified in the Generative Artificial Intelligence and Web-Scale Discovery report, such as the development of guidance to promote transparency on the use of AI discovery tools among stakeholders. The Standing Committee plans to host a series of community webinars in 2026 to discuss how to navigate the continued impact of AI on library discovery and identify potential solutions that could enhance user awareness of the integration of Generative AI within discovery services. 

ResourceSync Working Group

ResourceSync Web Page
Publication: ANSI/NISO Z39.99-2017, ResourceSync Framework Specification 

ResourceSync, a specification which describes a synchronization framework for the web consisting of various capabilities that allow third party systems to remain synchronized with a server's evolving resources, was first published in 2014 and updated more recently in 2017 as ANSI/NISO Z39.99-2017. The problem that ResourceSync was designed to solve spans the areas of search, discovery, deposit, metadata harvesting, and transfer; there is a need to keep collections of resources in sync so that additions, updates, and deletions of one are reflected in the other. The ResourceSync standard was written in such a way that individual capabilities could be combined to meet local requirements. A server may also describe synchronization capabilities that it supports and means through which third party systems may discover this support. The core functionality of the specification is intended to represent a functional replacement of OAI-PMH. (Other features, such as change notification, framework notification, and archive capabilities are published through separate documents, not currently part of the material part of NISO/ANSI standardization.)

Periodic review of the standard is currently underway, and a voting pool has been formed. The voting pool will vote on the standard this Spring.

A quick overview of ResourceSync, via YouTube, is available at http://youtu.be/ASQ4jMYytsA.

New Project: Open ILS/LSP Ecosystem Interconnectivity Encompassing Technical Needs, Definitions of Terms and Community Transparency; Open ILS Initiative (OII)

Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members

Libraries each have unique needs to uphold and sustain their mission. As a result, the potential combinations of software/systems evident across the library community are virtually unlimited. However, the ability to implement preferred approaches for each library, involving integrating disparate systems and tools, can be challenging when dealing with closed infrastructures, technical limitations, lack of standardization, system restrictions, unclarity about the scope of interoperability, and the potential confusion caused by lack of clarity/definition of related terms. The ILS (Integrated Library System) or LSP (Library Services Platform) tends to be the center of these environments where interoperability and bi-directional integrations are paramount, hence the focus of this endeavor.

This proposal is to support a working group that will develop a Recommended Practice to create visibility, clarity, and conformance of the areas that will optimize open interoperability around the ILS/LSP and support the various parties involved. The initial working group for the Open ILS Initiative Recommended Practice would analyze the existing landscape, including conducting community surveys, among other types of information gathering.

NISO expects to convene the working group later this year.  For more information contact nisohq@niso.org.