Noteworthy

The PIRUS Code of Practice, Release1, provides specifications for the recording and reporting of usage at the individual article level that are based on and are consistent with the COUNTER Code of Practice for e-Resources. The PIRUS Code of Practice provides the specifications and tools that will allow COUNTER-compliant publishers, repositories, and other organizations to record and report usage statistics at the individual article level that are credible, compatible, and consistent. (Non-COUNTER-compliant organizations may use the Secondary Clearing House services described in Section 1.10.)

This Code of Practice contains the following features:

• A list of definitions and other terms that are relevant to recording and reporting usage of individual items
• A methodology for the recording and reporting of usage at the individual article level, including specifications for the metadata to be recorded, the content types, and the versions whose usage may be counted
• Specifications for the PIRUS Article Reports
• Data processing rules to ensure that the usage data reported are credible, consistent, and compatible
• Specifications for the independent auditing of the PIRUS reports
• A description of the role of a Central Clearing House (CCH) in the calculation and consolidation of PIRUS usage data for articles, as well as other Clearing Houses in relation to the CCH

Unlike the standard COUNTER usage reports, which vendors must update monthly for all products covered, the PIRUS usage reports do not have to be provided monthly for every article they cover (but should be broken down by month when reported). Rather, the vendor must have the capability to produce the PIRUS reports for all the journal articles they host on an annual basis, as a minimum requirement.

COUNTER will be responsible for the ongoing management and implementation of PIRUS.

About PIRUS: www.projectcounter.org/pirus.html

PIRUS Code of Practice: www.projectcounter.org/documents/ Pirus_cop_OCT2013.pdf

The PIRUS Code of Practice provides the specifications and tools that will allow COUNTER-compliant publishers, repositories, and other organizations to record and report usage statistics at the individual article level that are credible, compatible, and consistent.

ANSI Launches Online Portal for Standards Incorporated by Reference

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has launched an online tool, the Incorporated by Reference (IBR) Portal, to provide read-only access to standards that are incorporated by reference into federal laws and regulations.

The U.S. Federal government has in the last few years issued requirements for such standards to be “reasonably available” to those affected by the legislation. This has created problems with people violating copyrights on these standards and others have suggested that such copyrights be declared invalid. ANSI has been leading the effort to educate legislators and the public about why these standards shouldn’t automatically be free and the importance of the revenue from the standards in supporting the work or even existence of the relevant standards development organizations (SDOs).

The IBR Portal is a solution that makes standards incorporated by reference available in a read-only mode (no printing, downloading, transferral, or even screenshots), thus providing access to the information but still safeguarding the SDO’s intellectual property. Thirteen SDOs are offering their IBR standards through the ANSI portal and seven others are allowing links to the IBR standards on their own website. Additional SDOs are expected to participate following Phase 1 of the portal’s implementation.

ANSI Press Release: www.ansi.org/news_publications/news_ story.aspx?menuid=7&articleid=3771&source=whatsnew102813

Incorporated by Reference (IBR) Portal: ibr.ansi.org

AAP Publishes EPUB 3 Implementation White Paper

In July 2013, the Digital Issues Working Group of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) launched an EPUB 3 Implementation Project “to bring together a group of people who could provide perspectives from a variety of publishers, reading system developers, retailers, service providers, and the accessibility community to jointly articulate priorities for the implementation of EPUB 3 features by reading systems and best practices for the creation of EPUBs, with a special emphasis on enabling accessibility.”

Many publishers are planning to issue and distribute EPUB 3 files in 2014 but have concerns over the inability or inconsistency of reading systems to support various features in the EPUB 3 format. While the long-term goal is to have the EPUB 3 standard fully supported, the AAP project was developed to identify priorities to enable greater use of the new format in the near-term. Among the supporters of the AAP initiative were the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the Readium Foundation, the Book Industry Study Group, EDItEUR, Benetech, the American Printing House for the Blind, the National Federation of the Blind, and the DAISY Consortium.

A white paper published in October 2013 summarizes the results of the initiative’s workshop held in New York on September 10. Priorities of features were assessed in four major workstreams: general features, accessibility, metadata, and use cases.

The most critical issues identified were:

• HTML5 structural elements
• Implementation of manifest and HTML5 fallbacks
• Consistent navigation
• Improvement and use of validation and preflight testing mechanisms
• Inclusion of image descriptions
• Proper use of and rendering of fundamental HTML5/CSS3 features such as HTML tables, lists, MathML, SVG, fonts, asides, floats, and image sizing and positioning
• Support for media using standard HTML5/CSS features for audio and video with proper fallbacks and EPUB 3’s Media Overlays

“It was clear to all participants in this initiative that improvements in both reading system feature implementation and practices for creating EPUBs on the part of publishers are not just important, they are urgent.” The white paper concluded that “while the ecosystem will never be perfect— both the EPUB 3 standard and the reading systems that implement it will continue to evolve—the prospect of a well-functioning EPUB 3 ecosystem is actually quite close: an ecosystem in which a great many fundamental and important features can be used consistently by publishers with the expectation that they will be implemented in a wide range of reading systems and platforms.”