Working Group Connection, September 2025: Projects via Information Creation & Curation Topic Committee

The Co-chairs of the ICC Topic Committee are: Stephen Flockton (IOP Publishing) and Charles O'Connor (Elsevier).

Content Platform/Linked Document

Co-chairs: Suzanne BeDell (Independent Consultant), Bill Kasdorf (Kasdorf & Associates)
Working Group Website
Publication: ANSI/NISO Z39.105-2023, Content Profile/Linked Document

The CP/LD standard was published in December 2023.  Its purpose is to define a flexible, extensible, standards-based format for combining content, data, and semantics intended as a machine-readable, self-describing markup that can be used to exchange data and content between systems, APIs, and services. By building on the HTML and JSON-LD standards, it allows linking in a much more distributed manner compared to other formats, whether between arbitrarily small chunks or large aggregations of content, while still providing enough structure to exchange content and data across processes, services, and workflows. The Standard includes a set of rules that outline the minimum characteristics of conforming documents (Linked Documents) and definitions of more detailed requirements for specific types of content and use cases (Content Profiles). A Github repository is available which includes examples and a test suite for implementations. 

Adoption of the standard will support the needs of today's content consumers who expect contexualized, targeted content delivered as a natural part of their workflow, whether they access knowledge through a library or institutional system or a publisher's digital offering. Print-centric standards combine structure, presentation, and semantics into a single format and require complicated production workflows to meet print and digital requirements and are not nimble enough to support new use cases.

NISO is now forming a CP/LD Standing Committee to manage outreach and support tasks. Contact nisohq@niso.org if you would like to participate.

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) Standing Committee

Co-chairs: Liz Allen (Cogency - Research for Impact Consulting), Veronique Kiermer (Public Library of Science (PLOS).
Project Web Site
Standing Committee Web Page
Publication: ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, CRediT, Contributor Roles Taxonomy

This working group's output, ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, CRediT, Contributor Roles Taxonomy, was published by ANSI in early 2022. CRediT is a high-level taxonomy--including 14 roles--that can be used to represent the roles typically played by contributors to scientific scholarly output. It is a simple and effective way to help promote greater visibility and recognition for the myriad contributions to scholarly research output. The roles describe each contributor’s specific contribution to the scholarly output.  Adopters of CRediT include many scholarly publishers and systems integrators. 

The NISO CRediT Standing Committee discusses outreach activities and other forms of support for the standard, including the formation of a CRediT Community of Interest which will provide input to the Standing Committee. Other potential areas of work include keeping tabs on adoption of CRediT by publishers and infrastructure providers and determining relationships and potential mapping with related taxonomies. The CRediT blog contains updates on publishers and platforms where CRediT has been adopted. 

The CRediT Standing Committee meets bimonthly and is currently reviewing guidance on how to best implement CRediT. Questions for the Standing Committee can be directed to nisohq@niso.org.

Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) Standing Committee

Co-chairs: Vincent Lizzi (Taylor & Francis), B. Tommie Usdin (Mulberry Technologies, Inc.)
Standing Committee Web Page
Publication: JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite (ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2024)

The purpose of JATS is to define a suite of XML elements and attributes that describes the content of metadata and journal articles using a common format that enables the exchange of journal content between publishers and archives. This Tag Suite is intended to preserve intellectual content of journals independent of the form in which the content was originally delivered, and to enable an archive to capture structural and semantic components of existing material. In addition, the JATS standard includes three implementations of the suite, called Tag Sets, which are intended to provide models for archiving, publishing, and authoring journal article content. 

The JATS Standing Committee manages its work via Continuous Maintenance procedures, which support incoming comments to be managed in an ongoing process of updates. The Standing Committee reviews incoming comments, reconciles JATS with its "sister" standards STS and BITS, and determines strategies for the next iteration, also discussing  a non-backwards compatible JATS 2.0 with no timeframe for finalization.

The latest version of JATS, JATS 1.4, was published as ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2024 in October 2024.  JATS 1.4 non-normative materials (DTDs, XSDs, RNGs, Tag Libraries) are available from the National Library of Medicine JATS website. 

Members of the JATS Standing Committee will take part in a community meeting to discuss the future of the JATS extension BITS in early October. BITS enables a format for publishers and archives to exchange book content. Following the success of JATSCon’s return in February 2025 as part of the NISO Plus conference in Baltimore, Maryland, NISO hopes to continue to host JATSCon as part of NISO Plus in 2026. 

JATS4R

Chair: Melissa Harrison (EMBL-EBI) with Steering Committee
JATS4R Website
Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members
NISO Publications listed on JATS4R web page

JATS For Reuse is an initiative is dedicated to creating best practices for tagging content in JATS (ANSI/NISO Z39.96) XML to optimize reuse and communication in particular discrete areas of work. JATS4R became a NISO-sponsored effort in 2018; all documents created since then by JATS4R subgroups are individual NISO Recommended Practices. JATS4R work areas are prioritized by the community based on user request and emerging standards, and recommendations are revisited and revised as necessary. A Steering Committee oversees all the work and makes decisions.

A subcommittee focusing on Funding has kicked off and subgroups focusing on Journal Article Versions and CREC will commence recruiting members soon.

Jeff Beck will be speaking at NISO Plus 2025 Global/Online as part of a Standards Update Session.

The JATS4R website, now hosted by NISO, is a good place to find more information, including a validator tool, a proposed roadmap incorporating community input, a list of all recommendations, and benefits of becoming involved. Participation in JATS4R efforts is always welcome. 

Journal Article Versions Revision

Co-chairs: Clay Burgett (American Chemical Society), Patrick Hargitt (Atypon), Mike Nason (University of New Brunswick/PKP)
Working Group Web Page
Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members

NISO RP-8-2008, Journal Article Versions (JAV): Recommendations of the NISO/ALPSP JAV Technical Working Group was published in 2008. Publication practices have changed rapidly since then and the recommendations need updating. For example, preprint output has accelerated in scholarly publication workflows and practice, as they are made publicly available through pre-publication repositories, and various publishers are experimenting with different ways to publish, update, and keep research alive. Versions are important and cite-able, and for many publishers the concept of a 'version of record' no longer applies or can apply to more than one instance at a time.

This group, which started its work in late 2021, is working to define a set of terms for each of the different versions of content that are published and describe how these are related to each other and how they may best be identified. There have been deep dives into how the current terms have been applied (or not); a general definition of an "article"; investigation on how preprints are used across the industry and discussions on how publisher and repository perspectives might be reconciled.  

This group has completed subgroup work to align JAV terms with an open peer review workflow and a distinct stage has been added to help distinguish post publication review flows. The working group is actively addressing feedback and finalizing replies to public comments on the draft, prior to presenting it to the Topic Committee for approval for NISO publication.

An update on JAV’s work will be presented by Mike Nason as part of a Standards Update Session at NISO Plus 2025 Global/Online.

Manuscript Exchange Common Approach

Co-chairs: Tony Alves (HighWire Press), Stephen Laverick (Green Fifteen Publishing Consultancy)
Standing Committee Web Page
Publication: NISO RP-30-2023, Manuscript Exchange Common Approach (MECA), version 2.0.1

The MECA Recommended Practice was published by NISO in June 2020 and updated in 2023. It supports researchers and service providers operating in the scholarly ecosystem in transfer of manuscripts between and among manuscript systems, such as those in use at publishers and preprint servers. Publishing operations and communications are improved when workflow processes such as manuscript rejection or alternate article submission recommendations can be supported across systems--using MECA.

The MECA Standing Committee, which includes some members of the MECA Working Group and some newer stakeholder representatives, provides education and support for the Recommended Practice. Standing Committee members meet bi-monthly to examine additional use cases for MECA, report on liaisons with JATS4R, build programmatic support for peer review processes and an API for technical transfer, and consider general approaches to further socialize MECA into the scholarly technology landscape. 

A survey is forthcoming to identify how the community is using MECA and identify possible new areas for revision within the current Recommended Practice. An update on MECA’s work will be presented by Tony Alves as part of a Standards Update Session at NISO Plus 2025 Global/Online.

The group is actively looking for new members. If you are interested, please contact nisohq@niso.org with a statement of interest.

Peer Review Terminology

Chair: Joris van Rossum (STM)
Standing Committee Web Page
Publication: ANSI/NISO Z39.106-2023, Standard Terminology for Peer Review

Peer review is the process used to assess the validity, quality, and often the originality of articles for publication. Its ultimate purpose is to maintain the integrity of science by filtering out invalid or poor quality articles, as well as make sure research outcomes are exposed to relevant audiences through publication in subject-specific journals. As such, it is a crucial process in scholarly communication and a pillar of the scientific method. 

NISO published the Peer Review Terminology standard in July 2023 after the NISO Working Group, formed in 2021, managed publisher trials of definitions and recommendations for their application originally developed by an STM working group.  This effort was a recognition that the scholarly communications industry needs support to ensure greater transparency and openness in peer review, which is an essential element of Open Science. The NISO standard centers on harmonizing and better communicating definitions of discrete elements of these processes, so that members of the community—whether they be authors, reviewers, editors or readers—can quickly and easily recognize how to more productively participate in the creation and qualification of scholarly content.  

The Standing Committee meets bimonthly to discuss industry adoption and planned outreach of the standard. The committee continues to focus on outreach to promote an increase in publisher adoption and implementation of the standard.

PIE-J (Presentation & Identification of E-Journals) Standing Committee

Chair: Sarah (Sally) Glasser (Hofstra University) 
Standing Committee Web Page 
Publication: PIE-J Recommended Practice (NISO RP-16-2013)

The PIE-J Recommended Practice, PIE-J: Presentation & Identification of E-Journals (NISO RP-16-2013) was published in 2013. It provides guidance to publishers and platform providers on the presentation of e-journals--a critical component of the global scholarly infrastructure--particularly in the areas of title presentation, accurate use of ISSN, and citation practices. The PIE-J Recommended Practice is intended to alleviate the problems encountered by end users who attempt to access article-based materials online using citation elements. Two forms of a brochure describing PIE-J are also available via the PIE-J web page. 

Members of the PIE-J Standing Committee meet periodically to discuss implementation, feedback regarding specific publishers, and marketing efforts. The Standing Committee has made available a template on the PIE-J website for librarians who would like to contact publishers and providers to describe concerns about the presentation of e-journals on their websites. The Committee has discussed the feasibility of organizing some future revisions to PIE-J, based on the revision of the ISSN standard (ISO 3297) and updates to ISO 8.

Standards-Specific Ontology Standard

Co-chairs: Robert Wheeler (ASME), Cord Wischhöfer (DIN Solutions)
Working Group Web Page

The SSOS is a high-level ontology which describes a limited set of core concepts and relationships in standards life cycles. Any expert working in standardization activities in more than one standards-developing organization (SDO) is aware that most consensus-based standards development and publishing processes share many common features and development stages. However, each SDO follows its own processes and rules, and ultimately, no standards development process in one organization is 100% identical to the process in another organization. This presents a challenge as standards users often need to understand the life cycle stage, be it a development stage or maintenance cycle information, from more than one organization in their daily practice.

The SSOS aims at a generic, non-SDO-specific description of the standards life cycles to which the stages and deliverables of standards from different SDOs can be mapped. If applied by SDOs, the use of NISO SSOS allows for better information systems and better automated retrieval of life cycle information across a wide range of standardization activities and standards products in many organizations.

The SSOS Working Group made its draft standard (and an OWL version of the ontology) available for public comment. Since that time, responses to the comments have been sent and an updated version of the standard was approved by the ICC Topic Committee. A NISO Voting Pool consisting of NISO members also approved the draft standard, but supplied more comments which have necessitated some editorial changes to the standard and non-normative ontologies. The working group met in November 2024 to discuss these further changes. After approval of the updated draft standard by the Working Group and Topic Committee, NISO will organize a recirculation ballot for the standard, after which it will submit the standard to ANSI for its approval and NISO publication, expected by late 2025. 

New Project: Update Author Name Changes After Publication

Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members

One aspect of formally-published research reports or publications, in addition to the wide dissemination of scholarly work, is to register and recognize the author's ownership and involvement in the work. It is important that an author is identified accurately and correctly in their outputs for many reasons: accountability, funding, precedence, promotion, tenure. This new project is to develop a NISO Recommended Practice for ensuring the widest possible notification and implementation of changes to author names post-publication. It will include recommendations for handling requests to update author names in published outputs and by which secondary and tertiary parties can be informed of the changes and update their own records to reflect changes. For more information or to volunteer for the working group, contact Keondra Bailey.