SAGE, Credo, Gale, and IEEE declare conformance with NISO's Open Discovery Initiative

Support Collaboration, Transparency and Discovery of Scholarly Content in Today's Library Ecosystem

Los Angeles, CA - In the cooperative spirit of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), four leading academic content providers -- Credo; Gale, a part of Cengage Learning; IEEE; and SAGE – today, publically disclose their support of the Open Discovery Initiative (ODI). In NISO’s Open Discovery Initiative: Promoting Transparency in Discovery (RP-19-2014), content providers are encouraged to take specific measures to declare their conformance with ODI’s recommended practice for pre-indexed “web-scale” discovery services, with the goal of increasing open communication and collaboration.

Each organization has published an ODI Conformance Statement, which articulates their efforts to meet ODI’s discovery service indexing recommendations. For example, using ODI’s conformance checklists, all four participating content providers make their full-text articles available to all discovery service providers for indexing. These providers state that core metadata for their publications is distributed routinely for indexing and that this data provides “the content item and additional descriptive content for as much of their content as possible.” In the spirit of transparency, the checklists from these four publishers note any relevant exceptions or gaps in their conformance to the ODI recommended practice.

The four publishers have declared the following:
We jointly release this statement in order to support and improve cross-sector collaboration in library discovery. We share the belief that clear and open communication is paramount in supporting the libraries that license pre-indexed discovery services, and in progressing industry-wide improvements to the discoverability of scholarly content in today’s library ecosystem.

We see our conformance statements and checklists as living documents, made possible by ODI’s standardized format for communicating the indexing and discoverability efforts of publishers with the library community. We encourage other publishers and discovery service providers to embrace ODI conformance, as a method for opening up conversations across the industry about discovery service indexing.

Furthermore, we believe that collaboration is central to improving academic resource discoverability, and that active and transparent disclosure of participation in discovery services is critical to our collective successes. By shedding light on the often misunderstood aspects of resource indexing, we believe that solutions and opportunities are brought to light.

These ODI Conformance Statements released today are linked from the NISO webpage. Additional information from these publishers can be found on the following pages:

• Credo, http://corp.credoreference.com/partners/discovery.html
• Gale, http://www.gale.com/discovery
• IEEE, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplorehelp/#/tools/toolsForAdministratorsAndLibrarians/discoveryServices/openDiscoveryInitiativeConformance
• SAGE, http://www.sagepub.com/discoverability.sp

“The ODI Conformance Checklist was created to enable standardized methods for content providers to assert their ODI support of libraries, discovery services, and other industry stakeholders,” commented Laura Morse, ODI co-chair and Director, Library Systems, Harvard University. “We are delighted that these four publishers are leading the way in implementing ODI’s recommendations, and we truly believe that their compliance will enhance the entire scholarly communication community.”

"It's gratifying to see the support for the Open Discovery Initiative recommendations from such preeminent content providers, and we hope that others will follow this lead," said Todd Carpenter, Executive Director of NISO. "We recognize that these statements represent their commitment to transparency and their willingness to communicate openly with all stakeholders in the discovery arena.”

SAGE’s Executive Manager of Product Analysis, Lettie Conrad, also serves as a co-chair of ODI.

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About Credo
Credo partners with educational institutions, libraries, publishers, and technology providers to prepare students for continuous learning and success in today’s knowledge economy. Credo’s innovative solutions are designed to support research and close critical thinking and information literacy gaps. As a trusted partner, Credo assists more than 2,500 institutions in fulfilling their missions in a cost-effective manner. Founded in 1999, Credo is headquartered in Boston. For more information please visit http://corp.credoreference.com.

About Cengage Learning and Gale
Cengage Learning is a leading educational content, technology, and services company for the higher education and K-12, professional and library markets worldwide. Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, is a global provider of research resources for libraries and businesses for more than 60 years. Gale is passionate about supporting the continued innovation and evolution of libraries by providing the content, tools, and services libraries need to promote information discovery, enable learning, and support economic, cultural, and intellectual growth in their communities. For more information, visit www.cengage.com or www.gale.cengage.com.

About IEEE
IEEE, a large, global technical professional organization, is dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. Through its highly cited publications, conferences, technology standards, and professional and educational activities, IEEE is the trusted voice on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. Learn more at http://www.ieee.org.

About SAGE
Founded 50 years ago by Sara Miller McCune to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community, SAGE publishes more than 850 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. A growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies, conference highlights and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC. www.sagepub.com

About the Open Discovery Initiative
Sponsored by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), the Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) aims at defining standards and/or best practices for the new generation of library discovery services that are based on indexed search. These discovery services are primarily based upon indexes derived from journals, ebooks and other electronic information of a scholarly nature. The content comes from a range of information providers and products—commercial, open access, institutional, etc.

The Recommended Practice was created by members of the ODI Working Group, which completed its work in June 2014 with the publication of NISO RP-19-2014. The ODI Standing Committee is now responsible for support and promotion of this work going forward. To learn more about ODI conformance, visit the Open Discovery Initiative workroom and download NISO RP-19-2014.