3.1 Open Access Metadata & Indicators

The first draft of the Open Access Metadata and Indicators standard was released in January 2014 for review and comment. This project will develop standardized bibliographic metadata and visual indicators to describe the accessibility of journal articles as well as potentially describe how “open” the item is. While the initial focus of this standard is dedicated to identification for readers to understand the level of openness the item has, the concept of this standard is to further develop the metadata to include re-use rights and agreement on transmission of the item, as well. The intent of this standard is that it will also be able to be machine readable for ready metadata mining and transmission between networked systems. The draft defines varies levels of availability of the content including whether it can be readily text-mined or if it has been published in a hybrid OA journal. The working group has recommended that NISO do not create any sort of designation for free-to-read material and that creation of such a logo is out of scope on the project. This allows any institution harvesting this metadata to create their own icon or logo that contextually sensitive to their own library or publishing environment. In addition, the working group has proposed not to define anything as “Open Access” as this carries such a multiplicity of meanings. Re-use rights will not be expressed via metadata but will be referred to via the metadata to an outside license. The free-to-read tag will carry both a start date and an end date to indicate the time frame and also to indicate any embargoed status an item may have. The license-ref will point to an outside license that is either human or machine readable that outlines what the re-use rights will be for the content. Again, there will be a license-ref start-date given to indicate when the access is being made available but no end-date given because it is taken that the license will always be applicable once it starts. It is recognized that if the recommendations are adopted, there will need to be further work on implementation and an analysis done on the best way to incorporate the free-to-read and license reference metadata into existing formats, such as ONIX, RDF, OAI-PMH, and Dublin Core (DC). (Draft for Comments, Open Access Metadata & Indicators, p.7) Uses cases are also outlined in the draft document. This is an exciting development in regards to OA provision and this suite of standards will have broad application once they are finalized and are being fully executed and utilized.

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are critical standards for any electronic item that is to made available on the world wide web. DOIs allow for both readers and institutional repository managers to accurately display and retrieve single entities on the web such as articles, data sets, and visual media. DOIs were adopted as an international standard in 2012 and have become readily accepted by all areas of the research community. It is believed that over 100 million DOI names have been assigned to date and 123 million resolution requests are handled by DOI server per month. There are 33 DOI handle servers located in 10 international locations and two cloud services currently being utilized. Without a DOI, an object put into a repository and promoted is less likely to be readily retrieved or discovered given today’s machine to machine networking capabilities.

The DOI website has some very useful resources, including a DOI Name Resolver Button, which you can add to IE or Firefox.

3.1 Open Access Metadata & Indicators
3.2 ORCID
3.3 FundRef
3.4 CrossMark
3.5 Preservation & Storage Formats
3.6 Alternative Metric Schemes

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