NISO RP-9-2026, KBART: Knowledge Bases and Related Tools Recommended Practice

KBART (Knowledge Bases and Related Tools), first published in 2010, is a Recommended Practice for the communication of electronic-resource title-list and coverage data from content providers to knowledge bases. KBART specifies file format, delivery mechanisms, and fields to include and, in the 2010 edition (known as Phase I), supported only serials. A revision of KBART (known as Phase II) was published in 2014 to include monographs and consortial collections in addition to serials. Beginning in 2019, the NISO KBART Standing Committee identified the following needs, which are now addressed in the 2026 revision of KBART (known as Phase III):

• The KBART Phase III Recommended Practice (RP) now provides fields and values to support new content types, such as multimedia.
• The KBART Standing Committee completed a full top-to-bottom revision of the Phase II specifications and examples to provide better clarity and address confusion arising from previous versions of the RP. 
• As KBART Automation (following the publication of the KBART Automation RP [NISO RP-26-2019]) now falls under the purview of the KBART Standing Committee, KBART Phase III provides file-level recommendations for KBART Automation.
• KBART Phase III has been revised to accommodate global content, with the introduction of translated and transliterated publication titles and conventions around contributors’ surnames. 
• The KBART endorsement process was completely overhauled as part of Phase III to make it clearer for applicants to understand the criteria that the Standing Committee uses when reviewing submitted files.
• KBART Phase III adds provisions for a file manifest. 
• In KBART Phase III, the Standing Committee reports known use cases and a road map for possible future work on two items: allowing the provision of KBART files in file formats beyond tab-delimited text (e.g., XML, JSON) and considering representing article-/chapter-level data using KBART. 

Previous versions: Phase II (2014)