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Soliciting Comments on Draft Update: Access and License Indicators

Soliciting Comments on Draft Update

August 2021

Comment Period Open August 19 - September 18

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) recently announced that its draft updated Access & License Indicators (ALI) Recommended Practice (NISO RP-22-202X) is available for public comment through September 18. Originally published in 2015, this Recommended Practice defines the metadata indicators used to indicate free-to-read content, as well as for linking to license terms for the use/re-use of that content. The public comment focus will be limited to the changed/added material in the Recommended Practice.

In response to community feedback, the updated Practice now also includes metadata and indicators that allow metadata users to filter or target subsets of license information. This, in turn, enables content platforms and other applications to determine whether their users can share a specific journal article version – or elements of it – in specific contexts, such as with researcher collaboration groups or on public profiles. 

ALI Revision Working Group co-chair, Esther Heuver (Business Development Manager - Mendeley, Elsevier) commented, “We are happy to have updated the ALI Recommended Practice to include an additional attribute definition (applies_to). This will allow publishers and platforms to utilize ALI tagging to assert specific permission contexts for their research articles.”  

Fellow co-chair Dan O’Brien (Assistant Director, Publishing Technology, American Chemical Society) noted, ”We are very grateful to all the members of the ALI Revision Working Group for their work to update the Recommended Practice. We are now pleased to share this draft with the wider community and look forward to receiving additional feedback that may help improve it before publication.”

NISO's Associate Executive Director, Nettie Lagace, added, "Many thanks to Esther, Dan, and the Revision Working Group members for their valuable updates to our Access & License Indicators (ALI) Recommended Practice. The additional attribute definition will help publishers, content platforms, and others ensure that content is free to access for the right people and groups. We now welcome community input on the proposed change.” 

The draft Recommended Practice, with commenting capability, is available at https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/ali-revision from August 19 to September 18.