Working Group Connection, September 2026: Projects via Information Discovery & Interchange Topic Committee

Co-chair of the IDI Topic Committee is: Mark Dehmlow (University of Notre Dame).

Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CREC)

Co-chairs: Caitlin Bakker (University of Regina), Maria Zalm (Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Standing Committee web page
Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members
Publication: CREC Recommended Practice (NISO RP-45-2024)

Retracted research is published work that is withdrawn, removed, or otherwise invalidated from the scientific and scholarly record. Although relatively rare, retracted research—including unsupported or fabricated data, fundamental errors, and unreproducible results—can be inadvertently propagated within the digital scholarly record through citations. The CREC Recommended Practice is intended to help address this problem, by clearly identifying parties involved in the retraction process, along with their responsibilities, actions, notifications, and the metadata necessary to communicate retracted research. CREC is an output of both the recent Sloan Foundation-funded project, Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science (RISRS) and the 2021 NISO Plus conference, where this topic was one of three highlighted by attendees as of highest importance. CREC will be consistent with existing guidelines, such as those published by the Council on Publishing Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Council of Science Editors (CSE). 

The NISO CREC Recommended Practice was published in June 2024. The primary aim of the Recommended Practice is to establish best practices for metadata creation, transfer, and display for both the original publication and the statement of retraction, removal, or EoC, with the goal of facilitating the timely and efficient communication of information to all relevant stakeholders. 

The NISO CREC Standing Committee began meeting in June 2025. The committee has been reviewing areas for further consideration identified during the development of the Recommended Practice. Discussions have focused on prioritizing these items for potential inclusion in an upcoming revision of the document or integration into training materials. 

In May, the CREC Recommended Practice won the 2026 Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) Gold EPIC Award in the Integrity Tools category during SSP's 48th Annual Meeting. In September, co-chair Caitlin Bakker participated on the Let's Set the Scholarly Record Straight panel at NISO Plus Global/Online.

Knowledge Bases And Related Tools (KBART) Standing Committee

Co-chairs: Robert Heaton (EBSCO), Noah Levin (Springer Publishing)
Contact KBART Chairs for endorsement approval
KBART Web Pages
Publication: Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) Recommended Practice (NISO RP-9-2026)

KBART is a NISO Recommended Practice that facilitates the transfer of holdings metadata from content providers to knowledge base suppliers and libraries. Knowledge bases are widely used to support library link resolvers and electronic resource management systems. The first iteration of the KBART Recommended Practice, which focused on journal holdings, was published in 2010; a 2014 "Phase II" revision extended support to metadata for e-books, conference proceedings, consortial subscriptions and some open access publications. Starting in early 2020, the KBART Standing Committee has been hard at work on research and actions around elements of its Phase III work with subgroups addressing areas of work such as clarifying the recommendations, revamping the mission statement, determining new types of material to support (such as video) and thus any required new fields, and creating a new file guide.  The endorsement process continues as approved providers are added to the KBART Registry, although a new validator application under development may help speed this process further. 

From the Working Group: "One thing we keep in mind as we revise KBART, and which we like to remind others, is that KBART is not intended to provide comprehensive descriptive metadata for content, a task more suited to MARC, for example. KBART aims to provide the metadata needed to identify the correct copy of an e-resource for linking purposes. At its core, KBART communicates holdings metadata."

The KBART Phase III Recommended Practice was published in August. This revision is a comprehensive update to the Phase II specifications and includes additional examples to clarify and resolve confusion from earlier versions. The updated Recommended Practice includes additional fields and values to support various content types (such as multimedia), facilitates global adoption by incorporating support for translated and transliterated publication titles and guidelines for contributors' surnames, and adds provisions for a file manifest to display an inventory of all KBART collections from a content provider. Additionally, the endorsement process has been revamped and is now known as KBART Compliance.

To support the release of KBART Phase III, the KBART webpage has been updated with new content and resources, such as an updated FAQ. The Standing Committee plans to host webinars in early 2027 to discuss the new KBART Compliance process.

Co-chairs Robert Heaton and Noah Kevin participated in the NISO Plus Global/Online conference, where they discussed the revision. 

Enhancing KBART for Automated Exchange of Title Lists and Library Holdings

Co-chairs: Stephanie Doellinger, Oliver Pesch (EBSCO Information Services)
Publication: KBART Automation Recommended Practice (NISO RP-26-2019)
KBART Automation Working Group Web Page 

The KBART Automation Working Group’s output, the KBART Automation Recommended Practice (NISO RP-26-2019) was published in June 2019. This work extends the KBART Phase 2 Recommended Practice to provide technical instructions to facilitate the automatic transfer and retrieval of holdings data between content providers and institutional knowledge bases with the goal of automatically and regularly updating institutional activations and settings via an API. Included in the Recommended Practice are descriptions of data elements and file formats; options a content provider must provide to enable customers to access its holdings reports; expected API support that enables automated retrieval of reports; suggested license language and a discussion of data confidentiality; and description of additional elements and attribute values that can be included in the reports.

The management of KBART Automation has now transitioned to the KBART Standing Committee. Following the release of KBART Phase III, the Standing Committee intends to conduct a review of KBART Automation to explore potential improvements.

NCIP (NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol) Standing Committee

NCIP Web Pages
NCIP Standing Committee
Publication: ANSI/NISO Z39.83-1-2012 (version 2.02), NISO Circulation Interchange - Part 1: Protocol (NCIP)
Publication: ANSI/NISO Z39.83-2-2012 (version 2.02), NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP) Part 2: Implementation Profile 1 

The latest version of NCIP, 2.02, was published in 2012. The Standing Committee meets periodically to review status of implementations and discuss other general business, such as additions to the NCIP website, implementor questions, and potential updates to the protocol. Input from the public is welcome. 

Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) Standing Committee

Co-chairs: Rachel Kessler (ProQuest), Ken Varnum (University of Michigan)
ODI Web Pages
Publication: ODI Recommended Practice (NISO RP-19-2020)

The newest version of the Open Discovery Initiative Recommended Practice was approved by NISO and published in June 2020. The updated ODI Recommended Practice provides a more detailed treatment of Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) content products, and supports better metadata sharing (including information about open access material) and record display, as well as improved tracking of usage statistics and authentication mechanisms. It also includes advice on systems, training, and communication for libraries that configure and upgrade their discovery systems. ODI's intent is to unify the community by encouraging dialogue among stakeholders and by increasing order within the industry by standardizing practices.

The ODI Standing Committee continues to focus on specific areas of work identified in the Generative Artificial Intelligence and Web-Scale Discovery report, such as the development of guidance to promote transparency on the use of AI discovery tools among stakeholders and community webinars to discuss how to navigate the continued impact of AI on library discovery and identify potential solutions to challenges. On September 8th, the Standing Committee hosted the first webinar in its AI Series, Effect of Generative AI on Library Discovery. The second webinar in the series, Is There AI in My Search Results and Why Should I Care?, will be held on October 15th.

Open ILS Initiative (OII) Working Group

Co-chairs: Russell Palmer (GALILEO) and Scott Bernier (EBSCO Information Services)
Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members

Libraries each have unique needs to uphold and sustain their mission. As a result, the potential combinations of software/systems evident across the library community are virtually unlimited. However, the ability to implement preferred approaches for each library, involving integrating disparate systems and tools, can be challenging when dealing with closed infrastructures, technical limitations, lack of standardization, system restrictions, unclarity about the scope of interoperability, and the potential confusion caused by lack of clarity/definition of related terms. The ILS (Integrated Library System) or LSP (Library Services Platform) tends to be the center of these environments where interoperability and bi-directional integrations are paramount, hence the focus of this endeavor.

This proposal is to support a working group that will develop a Recommended Practice to create visibility, clarity, and conformance of the areas that will optimize open interoperability around the ILS/LSP and support the various parties involved. The initial working group for the Open ILS Initiative Recommended Practice would analyze the existing landscape, including conducting community surveys, among other types of information gathering.

This working group is now convening and is focused on developing their work plan.  

ResourceSync Working Group

ResourceSync Web Page
Publication: ANSI/NISO Z39.99-2017, ResourceSync Framework Specification 

ResourceSync, a specification which describes a synchronization framework for the web consisting of various capabilities that allow third party systems to remain synchronized with a server's evolving resources, was first published in 2014 and updated more recently in 2017 as ANSI/NISO Z39.99-2017. The problem that ResourceSync was designed to solve spans the areas of search, discovery, deposit, metadata harvesting, and transfer; there is a need to keep collections of resources in sync so that additions, updates, and deletions of one are reflected in the other. The ResourceSync standard was written in such a way that individual capabilities could be combined to meet local requirements. A server may also describe synchronization capabilities that it supports and means through which third party systems may discover this support. The core functionality of the specification is intended to represent a functional replacement of OAI-PMH. (Other features, such as change notification, framework notification, and archive capabilities are published through separate documents, not currently part of the material part of NISO/ANSI standardization.)

Periodic review of the standard is currently underway, and a voting pool has been formed. The voting pool will vote on the standard this Spring.

A quick overview of ResourceSync, via YouTube, is available at http://youtu.be/ASQ4jMYytsA.