The future – what needs to happen? The publisher view

Ed PentzExecutive Director, CrossRef

Discovery and access: standards and the information chain, London, 7th December

2006

Why standards?

• Cliff and others summed it up well….

• Standards are valuable to publishers if:– They cut costs and make things easier– They help improve products and services– Enable publishers to do something they

couldn’t do before– Aren’t too difficult to implement

Traditionally

• Publishers and libraries have had different standards as a result of different goals– Publishers focused on supply chain/commerce (ISBN)– Libraries focused on collection development/

cataloging (ISSN)

• Now it’s all about access and efficiently exchanging content, product, trading and licensing data

• Collaboration is essential

Web Services

• New Internet/Web services/standards rapidly developing

• Largely outside the control of publishers or libraries

• Huge opportunities for scholarly communications to build on top of them so….

• How they get applied is crucial• URI, HTTP, XML, RSS, AJAX• OAI-PMH, SRW/SRU, ONIX all make heavy use

of web standards

Standards Development

• Top down vs bottom up – a little of both?– Lessons: BICI/SICI/PII, ISTC, OpenURL 0.1

to 1.0?

• KISS – Keep it Simple, Stupid

• Must deal with complexity - Albert Einstein "everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler"

Specific points

• Good quality metadata drives everything• Must have unique, persistent IDs for

content at all levels - article/chapter up to book/journal (DOIs)

• Must have machine readable holdings data, product data, licensing data and rights data (ONIX)

• Must make access seamless for users• PLEASE – USE DOIs in OpenURLs!!

Focus on End Users

• Focus on better discoverability and accessibility

• Enable users to get to authoritative, appropriate content in one or two clicks without any hassle

• Otherwise….GYM(AI) will take over

PublisherLibrarian?