ONIX for Publications Licenses: Getting an Electronic Grip on License Information

Based on the work of the Digital Library Federation's (DLF's) Electronic Resource Management Initiative (ERMI) and EDItEUR's work on the ONIX (ONline Information eXchange) structure for communicating publisher data, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and these partners have worked to develop and improve ONIX for Publications Licenses (ONIX-PL), a system for storing and communicating the terms of a license between systems in XML format. This article outlines the history of ERMI, license management issues, and the status of ONIX-PL. It also presents developments over the past year since ONIX-PL was launched officially, describing the potential benefits of the application.