ONIX for Publications Licenses: Getting an Electronic Grip on License Information

Management of the negotiation for licensed electronic content has been a growing issue since libraries began buying electronic products in large numbers in the 1990s. As subscriptions to digital content have expanded rapidly, the problems of tracking, managing, and communicating the rights and responsibilities agreed to in licenses have grown exponentially. Based on the work of the Digital Library Federation's (DLF's) Electronic Resource Management Initiative (ERMI) and EDItEUR's work on the ONIX (ONline Information eXchange) structure for communicating publisher data, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and these partners have worked to develop and improve ONIX for Publications Licenses (ONIX-PL), a system for storing and communicating the terms of a license between systems in XML format. This presentation outlined the history of ERMI, license management issues, and the status of ONIX-PL. It also presents developments over the past year since ONIX-PL was launched officially, describing the potential benefits of the application.