CDL: NISO Publishes Themed Issue of Information Standards Quarterly on Licensing of Digital Content

NISO Publishes Themed Issue of Information Standards Quarterly on 
Licensing of Digital Content
From: "NISO" <niso-announce_at_niso.org>

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the 
publication of a special themed issue of Information Standards Quarterly 
(ISQ) on the topic of Licensing of Digital Content. Licensing of digital 
content has been a complexand contentiousissue since the advent of the 
first e-journal. While much understanding and experience has been gained 
since then, greater diversity in types of e-content and technology 
advances continuously add new challenges to licensing. This issue of ISQ 
discusses the current state of e-content licensing, standards and tools 
to aid in the licensing process, and two projects aimed at improving 
rights management and providing an alternative to standard licenses.

Ann Shumelda Okerson provides her Reflections on Library Licensing, 
describing both the advancements that have occurred in digital content 
licensing over the past decade and the remaining and new challenges that 
we need to address.

David Martin authors a standard spotlight on the ONIX for Publication 
Licenses specification from EDItEUR. While this standard has been around 
for over five years, several recent developments may help make its 
adoption finally take off.

The Linked Content Coalition is a relatively new project created by a 
global consortium of standards bodies and registries. While not 
explicitly about licensing, the identifiers and metadata related to 
usage rights that they expound are critical to the ability for machines 
to manage, distribute, and display rights and licensing information. 
Todd Carpenter discusses how the group aims to make it possible to 
manage and access online rights information seamlessly across all types 
of media.

NISOs Shared Electronic Resource Understanding (SERU) recommended 
practice, presented as an alternative to a formal licensing negotiation, 
was updated in 2012 to expand its use beyond e-journals. Adam Chesler 
and Anne McKee review in SERU: Six Years and Still Going Strong, how 
this approach continues to grow in use.

ISQ is available in open access in electronic format on the NISO 
website. Both the entire issue on Open Access Infrastructure and the 
individual articles may be freely downloaded. Print copies of ISQ are 
available by subscription and as print on demand. For more information 
and to access the free electronic version, visit: 
www.niso.org/publications/isq.