The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has launched a draft 'Open Access Metadata and Indicators' this January, which are open for comments unti February the 4th. The objective of these indicators it to develop standardized bibliographic metadata and visual indicators to describe the accessibility of journal articles as well as potentially describe how "open" the item is.

The current situation

The current situation is

• "that many open access research outputs (articles, monographs, etc) are available from publishers under the banner of Open Access (OA), Increased Access, Public Access, or other descriptions; the terms offered vary between publishers and, in some cases, based on the funding organization of the author.
• Adding to the potential confusion, a number of publishers also offer hybrid options in which some articles are "open" while the rest of the journal's content are available only by subscription or license.
• No standardized bibliographic metadata currently provides information on whether a specific article is freely readable and what re-use rights might be available to readers.
• Visual indicators or icons indicating the openness of an article are inconsistent in both design and use across publishers or even across journals from the same publisher" (NISO Announcement)

NISO's Recommendations

This draft recommended practice proposes the adoption of two core pieces of metadata and associated tags: <free_to_read> and <license_ref>. The first tag would indicate that the work is freely accessible during the specified timeframe (if applicable). The second tag would contain a reference to a URI that carries the license terms specifying how a work may be used

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