NISO voting members approved a new project to create a Standards-Specific Ontology Standard (short title: NISO SSOS). A working group is in the process of being formed to develop and standardize a high-level ontology to describe a limited set of core concepts and relationships. This will facilitate use of standards, support more consistent discovery and navigation within them, and set a foundation for other semantic applications, such as linked data, in the standards ecosystem. Agreement on an ontology enables standards producers and distributors to further leverage existing investments in XML and builds on existing work such as the NISO Standard Tag Suite, an ANSI/NISO standard that is a set of XML elements that provide a common format for preserving intellectual content of standards regardless of the form in which the content was originally delivered. This work will form the foundation needed to move forward in such key areas as improved machine readability.
If you would like to express your interest in participating in this working group, please contact Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director of Programs (nlagace@niso.org).
