Working Group Connection, September 2025: Projects via Information Policy & Analysis Topic Committee

Co-chairs of the IPA Topic Committee are: Jennifer D’Urso (Johns Hopkins University Press) and Moon Kim (University of British Columbia).

Accessibility Remediation Metadata (ARM)

Co-chairs: Bill Kasdorf (Kasdorf and Associates, LLC.), J. Stephen Downie (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Jacob Jett (Association of State Floodplain Managers)
Accessibility Remediation Metadata (ARM) Webpage
Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members

Many books, articles, videos, and other resources are often inaccessible or not sufficiently accessible to people with perceptual, cognitive, physical, or other disabilities. Schools, colleges, and universities are typically required by law to provide accessible versions of resources that students need. Similarly, government documents and other resources in the United States and elsewhere are required to be accessible. Unfortunately, most published resources are not yet provided by their publishers in fully accessible forms. This requires what is known as remediation: acquiring a publication in some available format and altering it to make it accessible, typically to a single individual needing a particular type of remediation. 

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded project, "FRAME: Federating Repositories of Accessible Materials for Education," was formed to eliminate redundant work and facilitate the sharing of remediated resources. As no standard metadata describing the process and results of remediation for accessibility in sufficient detail existed, the FRAME metadata model was developed to enable both discovery and deposit functions. 

The Accessibility Remediation Metadata (ARM) Working Group will extend and refine the FRAME metadata model to meet the needs of the broader accessibility community, focused on individuals and organizations involved in the remediation of content for accessibility and the consumption of remediated content.  This work will include writing documentation that clearly defines and describes the properties in the model, the values they can use, and the relationships between them, and developing a schema that enables validation of content conformance to the model. 

The ARM Technical subgroup continues its work to refine and address the technical requirements needed to develop the additional schema that will make up the standard. The subgroup has started drafting the technical details of the standard, and the full group will begin drafting after the subgroup completes its work in late September.

Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Infrastructure Project (CCLIP) Working Groups

Acquisitions Working Group
Co-Chairs: Jesse Koennecke (Cornell University), Russell Michalak (Goldey-Beacom College)

Assessment/Data Analysis Working Group
Co-Chairs: Anne Larrivee (West Chester University of Pennsylvania), Jharina Pascual (University of California, Irvine)

Cataloging/Metadata Working Group
Co-Chairs: Gaëlle Bequet (ISSN International Centre), Jeanette Norris (Yale University) 

Collections Development and Selection Working Group
Co-chairs: Eva Jurczyk (University of Toronto), Bill Maltarich (New York University)

Consortia Working Group
Co-Chairs: Robin Hastings (Northeast Kansas Library System (NEKLS), Boaz Nadav-Manes (Lehigh University)

Infrastructure Working Group
Co-chairs: Rob Cartolano (Columbia University Libraries), Kris Maloney (Big10 Academic Alliance (BTAA), Rutgers University)

Organizational Strategy and Governance Working Group
Co-chairs: Mike Gorrell (Index Data), Boaz Nadav-Manes (Lehigh University)
Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members
CCLP Project Web Site

CCLIP Working Groups, part of the IMLS-funded Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project, will develop a NISO Recommended Practice, based on an open standards architecture, that will support the flow of data about distinct library collections. The Recommended Practice will document exchange protocols that will describe gathering, normalizing, and exchanging holdings information, contractual information, retention obligations, and usage data. The CCLIP model will also include aggregation of library staff and subject matter expertise, local/consortial/group-based insights, and publisher/marketplace information necessary to support collaborative decisions at both the local and cross-institutional levels.

Initial planned CCLP applications based on these recommendations may include: A) An aggregated shared index and knowledge base in which libraries/publishers can share data about their collections and expertise; B) A discovery mechanism for library staff to support searching and browsing for content, information, and human resources; C) A communication application that will support interactions across institutions; D) Data aggregation, visualization, and reporting; E) Negotiation and group purchasing decision support protocols. The group will also review existing standards and protocols for the exchange of this information and, wherever possible, will adapt these extant best practices to this process, or recommend additional changes to those existing specifications.

Following the completion of the working group’s activities, an editorial team composed of members from various working groups within the CCLIP project has been at work over the summer reviewing and refining the document. Upon the completion of their work, the draft recommended practice will be released for public comment, anticipated by early October 2025.

Open Access Business Processes (OABP)

Co-chairs: Yvonne Campfens (OA Switchboard), Amanda Holmes (CRKN)
OABP Working Group Web page 
Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members

The increasing adoption of OA policies and mandates has shifted strategy and business practices in libraries, scholarly publishing entities, and associated organizations. Meanwhile, the operationalization of financial transactions, compliance tracking with different policies, and related workflows has yet to be normalized. In the absence of established best practices there exists a sundry assortment of individualized solutions in libraries and publishers that rely heavily on publishers' workflows, systems, dashboards, invoices, and data. A number of organizations have defined local workflows to facilitate work but a shared recommendation would be of benefit to the entire community. The Open Access Business Processes (OABP) Working Group began meeting late in 2023 and is developing a Recommended Practice on operationalizing OA business practices. 

The draft Recommended Practice is now available for public comment through October 17, 2025. The draft introduces a shared glossary to eliminate confusion over terminology, clear metadata specifications to ensure information flows smoothly between systems, and guidance on reporting, financial tracking, and agreement management. Together, these elements will help stakeholders across the publishing ecosystem work together more effectively.

Amanda Holmes will present an update on OABP’s work will be included as part of a Standards Update Session at NISO Plus 2025 Global/Online.

Seamless Access

Project Website

NISO provides support and expertise to the Seamless Access project in the form of leadership on several working groups and membership on the governance committee of the project. SeamlessAccess is designed to enable a more streamlined access experience for federated authentication across scholarly and research information infrastructures, and works to make all of federated authentication a better experience for users. 

Since our last update, SeamlessAccess has completed work on an Access Audit Toolkit Reliability and Security topics, designed to help organizations determine how robust their authentication and authorization systems are in a selection of specific areas. Now that the work on IdP filtering, allowing integrators to show a selection of organizations to their users, has been released, the team is engaging in technical discovery on IdP Filtering In, which will allow service providers to accept log in credentials from additional sources. Technical discovery will also begin on ways SeamlessAccess can integrate with Wallet technologies. Work continues on co-branding and pinning of IdPs. Along with this work, the SeamlessAccess.org website is in the finishing touches stage, so keep an eye out for that to be released.

Hylke Koers, Heather Flanagan, and Tim Lloyd will be presenting on digital identity and how it is changing, in addition to an update on the group’s work by Heather Staines will be included at NISO Plus 2025 Global/Online. 

SERU (Shared E-Resource Understanding) Standing Committee

SERU Standing Committee Web page
Publication: SERU Recommended Practice (NISO RP-7-2012)

The SERU Recommended Practice was updated in 2012 to be more flexible for use with online products beyond e-journals, and is supported by its Standing Committee who works to publicize SERU and educate libraries and publishers via direct contacts and public presentations at industry conferences.  The SERU website pages are available to help publishers and libraries understand and use the SERU material and NISO continues to add more libraries and publishers to the SERU Registry upon request. 

Transfer Standing Committee

Co-chairs: Sophia Anderton (BJU International), Emilie Lavallée-Funston (University of Stirling) 
Transfer Standing Committee Web page 
Publication: Transfer Recommended Practice (NISO RP-24-2019)

The most recent version of the Transfer Code of Practice, Version 4 was published in 2019. Transfer helps publishers ensure that content remains accessible by readers and librarians when a journal or set of journals is transferred between parties, and supports a smooth process with minimal disruption. Publishers are asked to endorse the Code of Practice and to abide by its principles wherever it is commercially reasonable to do so. Supporting publishers are included in a list of endorsers on the Transfer website. The Transfer Alerting Service, sponsored by the ISSN Agency, facilitates communication about journal transfers and includes a database where details about transfers can be searched. 

The members of the Transfer Standing Committee, who meet bi-monthly, are responsible for encouraging publisher endorsement and planning outreach, education and training activities. These continue at industry conferences where members meet publishers in person and talk to them about Transfer directly.

Since last year, the Standing Committee has been immersed in subgroup discussions around the next version of Transfer, reviewing new use scenarios--such as those involving open access details, such as transformative agreements--and inspecting Transfer elements and procedures that may need to be updated in light of these industry development. 

In March, the draft Recommended Practice of Version 5 of the Transfer Code of Practice was made available for public comment. The public comment period ended in early May, but comments and the draft can still be accessed on the group's website. The working group is currently evaluating the feedback received to determine how it can be incorporated into the draft.

Transfer Standing Committee member Heather Staines will give an update on the group’s activities and review of public comments at NISO Plus Global/Online in September.

U.S. National PID Strategy

Co-chairs: John Chodacki (California Digital Library (CDL), Rachael Kotarski (University of Chicago Library)
U.S. National PID Strategy Working Group Webpage
Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members

Persistent identifiers, or PIDs, are a critical part of the infrastructure supporting scholarly communications and open research. They support research discovery and citations, allow users and systems to easily identify authors and institutions and link them to research outputs, and help ensure compliance with a growing number of government and funder mandates advancing open scholarship. To date, however, approaches to encouraging the adoption of PIDs and investment in PID infrastructure have not been coordinated, and there is little guidance available on how best to improve the implementation and efficacy of PIDs within the diverse spheres of the US research landscape. The Open Research Funders Group, building on work first begun by the Research Data Alliance, released a report, “Developing a US National PID Strategy,” in the spring of 2024. The report highlighted the need for a strategy that would build support for PIDs, increase their adoption, and help stakeholders to incorporate them into workflows and systems more easily. The NISO U.S. National PID Strategy Working Group will further expand on the work defined by the ORFG PID Strategy Working Group to create a standard advancing PIDs and open scholarship.

Since our last update, the Audience/Scope subgroup has completed its work. Meanwhile the Normative subgroup started work on topics such as characteristics of resolution, metadata, and attribution to be incorporated into the draft standard.

An update on the group’s work will be presented by Rachael Kotarski as part of a Standards Update Session at NISO Plus 2025 Global/Online.

Z39.7 Data Dictionary Standing Committee

Co-chairs: Martha Kyrillidou (QualityMetrics), Joe Zucca (University of Pennsylvania)
Z39.7 Standing Committee

The purpose of ANSI/NISO Z39.7-2013 Information Services and Use: Metrics & Statistics for Libraries and Information Providers - Data Dictionary is to assist the information community by indicating and defining useful quantifiable information to measure the resources and performance of libraries and to provide a body of valid and comparable data on American libraries. It identifies standard definitions, methods, and practices relevant to library statistics activities in the United States. Any user of the online standard may submit suggested changes which are then reviewed by the Standing Committee during its conference calls.  As part of its work, the Standing Committee scans and reviews the statistical survey landscape and examines other assessment efforts--including use of particular vocabularies--in the community for effects on the Data Dictionary. 

The Z39.7 Standing Committee has finalized a new draft of the standard. It is expected that this updated draft will be made available to NISO Voting Members for their approval in the coming months and subsequently presented to ANSI for its approval prior to NISO publication. 

New Project: Unique Electronic Resource Package Identifiers (Package ID)

Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members

E-resources are frequently purchased as packages, which can range in size from a handful of titles to hundreds of thousands. Currently, these packages can only be identified by their name in the supply chain, within elements such as invoices, publisher websites, knowledge bases, etc. However, names are inherently ambiguous, so this causes problems that affect all stakeholders—libraries, content providers and platforms, knowledge base providers, and even users.

The NISO Unique Electronic Resource Package Identifiers Working Group will evaluate and create recommendations for a unique identifier to enable disambiguation between packages, which can be used across the supply chain. This identifier will allow all stakeholders to streamline and simplify their processes, and to more easily track changes. It will also provide libraries with clear information about which titles a package contains, enabling them, for example, to manage claims when journals move between publishers. 

NISO expects to convene the working group later this year.  For more information contact Keondra Bailey.