Summit on Serials in the Digital Environment

NISO EDItEUR Joint Working Party on the Exchange of Serials Subscription Information (JWP)

Priscilla Caplan

1. Goals

The JWP was formed to see if ONIX for Serials could be used as a standard format for communicating information pertaining to libraries' subscriptions to serial titles and related products (packages, aggregations, online services, etc.). Currently this information is exchanged between libraries, publishers, subscription agents, PAMS (publication access management services such as Serials Solutions), and other parties, but the data elements and message formats used vary widely. NISO felt that a single standard format would make it easier and ultimately less expensive for all parties involved. EDItEUR felt that using ONIX for Serials as a base would encourage the adoption of this family of specifications in the library and vendor communities.

The deliverables in the initial charge were: 1) to recommend modifications to the existing ONIX for Serials specifications to allow their use in this context; 2) to pilot the use of the format(s) ; and 3) to investigate a transaction-based (i.e. query/response) exchange.

2. Status

Currently two new ONIX for Serials message formats have been drafted as XML schema and documented. Pilots are ongoing. The Serial Product and Subscription (SPS) format can communicate a publisher's price catalog or a priced list of products subscribed to by a library. The Serial Online Holdings (SOH) format indicates which serial titles a library receives from which services, ordered by title or by service. The group has declined to pursue the third element of the charge. The JWP has been extended through 2004, so that the group can take on the review and enhancement of a third draft schema, the Serial Release Notification (SRN), which provides an alert that specific journal issues or articles have been published.

In a larger context, NISO and EDItEUR have agreed to joint stewardship of ONIX for Serials and are working out the details at this time. There will be an ongoing maintenance process with input from all affected sectors.

3. Issues

Work is hindered by the lack of unambiguous identifiers for serial title versions, serial works (titles), and parties.

Currently the ISSN ought to identify the serial title version, but deviant implementations by publishers and library systems make it unreliable in this context. Similarly an identifier to bring together all versions of a serial title does not exist, although the JWP examined using ISTCs and DOIs for this purpose. We are watching the ISSN revision closely. For parties, use of SAN for publishers and MARC Organization Code for libraries has been discussed, but these too do not meet all the functional requirements for identifiers in this context.

Identifier issues are beyond the scope and power of the JWP, which can only call attention to the problems and try to encourage the development of solutions.

4. References

NISO White Paper - The Exchange of Serials Subscription Information by Ed Jones, http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/SerialsWP.html.

JWP website (unofficial), http://www.fcla.edu/~pcaplan/jwp.