Communicating Licensing Terms: breaking the implementation impasse

1. Communicating Licensing Terms:breaking the implementation impasse A workshop for UKSG 2010 Mark Bide – Executive Director, EDItEUR

2. …or which comes first?

3. About EDItEUR • London-based global trade standards organization for books and serials supply chains • Established 1991 • Not-for-profit membership organization • ONIX family of communications standards • ONIX for Books • ONIX for Serials (online subscription products including ebooks) • ONIX for Licensing Terms • EDI • RFID • Manage the International ISBN Agency

4. ONIX family principles • XML • Common approach to encoding, validation • Designed for global application • Permissive, open structures • Able to cover a wide range of use cases and to be adaptable to local use without compromising the core structures • Encourage localised and appropriate profiling for specific applications • Reuse of key structures and semantics within and between message families • Common composites • Shared code values • Separate message structure from code values • Easy update of code lists while maintaining backwards compatibility • Only when absolutely necessary (new “major release” like ONIX for Books 3.0) is backwards compatibility lost

5. A very short introduction to ONIX-PL

6. ONIX-PL: the problem • …there is a desire on the part of users of resources…to be compliant with terms established by rightsholders…the need for users to know what permissions attach to the access and use of any particular resource becomes increasingly pressing due to considerable differentiation between license terms…It is difficult or impossible for users to discover for themselves the terms that apply to a particular resource… • With licenses typically available only on paper (or its digital equivalent), reference to license terms is labour intensive and slow • ERMS only part of the solution – how do you populate the data?

7. ONIX-PL: (part of) the solution? • …lies in the establishment of mechanisms by which key elements of licenses can be made available so that a user can be provided with the most significant elements of license information at the point of use – those that relate to permitted access and use. This needs to happen without additional human intervention; those significant license terms must be machine interpretable.

8. ONIX-PL: the headlines • ONIX for Publications Licences (ONIX-PL) an open message standard for expressing publisher-library licences in XML using an extensible dictionary of terms • v1.0 published on the EDItEUR website • A second issue of the Code Lists will be published in the next few months • ERM systems will allow users to link from e-resources to user-friendly understandable usage terms • Librarians can view complete licence and interpret terms • OPLE – an open source authoring/editing tool, jointly funded by JISC and PLS to help publishers map their licences to ONIX-PL and libraries to add interpretation or map licenses • RELI Project – a pilot project to demonstrate the function of a licence registry • Although semantics specific to the publisher/library supply chain, the conceptual framework should be applicable to any licence

14. RELI – ONIX-PL in action “Registry of Electronic Licences”A JISC funded project led by the University of Loughborough

15. RELI: identifying user requirements • Making license terms available to end-users is important • Some form of symbolic representation of what is permitted and what is forbidden, but that only key usage terms • Interpreting licenses presents many problems, particularly if the meaning of clauses is obscure. In these cases most librarians tend to err on the side of caution and do not allow users to make any use of a resource if they are not completely clear about its legitimacy. • Librarians can find it difficult to present the clauses within the license in a meaningful way without expert unpicking of the “legal jargon”. • Librarians indicated that integrating a license registry with existing library management systems would be desirable, but that it should function without relying on other library management systems. • Publishers would like to be able to offer one broad general license, but this was not possible due to differing conditions on the sale of journals. Publishers, however, did indicate that they would be willing to create machine-readable licenses when it can be shown that there is a demand for them.

16. The challenge of identity – license to resource

17. The challenge of identity – license to resource to user

18. High level overview of process

19. The user view of RELI

20. The user view of RELI

21. RELI Conclusions • Expressing licenses in XML is a considerable discipline for publishers and everyone else in the chain • There is a steep learning curve for everyone • Expressing licenses in XML does not overcome licensing disagreements • Indeed, in the short term, the opposite may be true • Removing ambiguity is sometimes seen as a disadvantage…. • There are substantial challenges in identification • Of resource, licenses and users • A license registry can be useful to an institution in a number of ways, as well as providing permissions data for users • Storing all licenses in one place for access by library staff • Enabling comparisons of licenses

22. …but which comes first?

23. RELI’s conclusion? • Only libraries can create the context in which ONIX-PL (or something like it) will get market traction • Demand for systems able to ingest and interpret XML expressions • …and demand for the expressions themselves

24. ONIX-PL: 2010

25. Where do we stand in 2010? • Approved JISC project: JISC Collections Licence Comparison and Analysis Tool • Create ONIX PL expressions of about 80 of the most licensed resources in the JISC Collections portfolio • Make licence expressions available to UK academic institutions for loading into ERMS • Create a web interface to allow view of individual licences, multiple licences at the same time, or to compare the terms of specific licences • SURF – active interest in implementation • Particularly relating to complex objects in institutional repositories

26. …but the reality remains • While when we present ONIX-PL, we find an enthusiastic audience… • …and major ERM vendors have committed to implementation… • … none has yet implemented • Publishers have indicated that they would be willing to express licences in ONIX-PL… • …“When there is demand from our customers”… • …although it can be a problem to identify who in the publishing house has the responsibility to make the decision to move this forward

27. The questions I want to explore with you today • Is this a problem that needs to be solved, or do we have a solution in search of a requirement? • Where would the most significant advantages lie in implementing ONIX-PL? • Who gains? Does anyone lose? • How can we solve the problem of the real costs of implementation? Who should be creating the XML expressions? • Are there other, better ways of solving the same problems? • If ONIX-PL is useful, how can we push implementation forward more effectively? • Where should we be putting our efforts?

28. Thank you mark@editeur.org