Scitation-Hosted Journals Now Compliant with KBART Phase I Recommended Practice
Melville, NY, June 14, 2010 — The American Institute of Physics is pleased to announce that the publications hosted on AIP's online platform, Scitation, are now compliant with the new Phase I recommendations of the KBART (Knowledge Bases And Related Tools) Working Group. Scitation hosts AIP publications and the publications of more than two dozen scholarly publishers. KBART is a joint initiative of UKSG and NISO, which is exploring data problems within the OpenURL supply chain. KBART's Phase I Recommended Practice, published in January 2010, contains practical recommendations for the timely exchange of accurate metadata between content providers and knowledge base developers. For a list of KBART-compliant Scitation titles, see librarians.scitation.org/librarians/help_files.jsp.
"It's fitting that AIP, which has a history of leadership in journal publishing and reference linking technologies, is the first publisher to provide metadata files that adhere to KBART's recommendations,” said Sarah Pearson, KBART co-chair and E-Resources & Serials Coordinator at the University of Birmingham.
The improved timeliness in the transmission of accurate metadata resulting from KBART compliance will benefit AIP by creating a smoother user experience—thereby reducing the cost of customer service and driving more traffic to AIP's content. AIP also hopes that increased traffic will support usage-based revenue streams, and be a key factor in library purchasing decisions.
AIP believes that compliance with KBART's recommendations will also benefit its institutional customers. It will allow library patrons to maximize the usage of licensed content—thereby improving the library's return on investment—and enhance discoverability for its users as they conduct research. In addition, it can potentially reduce reference and e-resource support queries that the institution is required to field.
Julie Zhu, a Senior Project Coordinator at AIP, is a member of the KBART Phase II Working Group, which is tasked with a number of critical new initiatives, including the creation of a list of KBART fields for Conference Proceedings and eBooks. Ms. Zhu stated, "It's exciting to be part of this potentially industry-changing initiative. Moving beyond Phase I, we are now concentrating on projects that include establishing a registry of knowledge base supply chain contacts, and promoting KBART through multiple channels, such as Wikipedia.”
About AIP
The American Institute of Physics is a federation of 10 physical science societies representing more than 135,000 scientists, engineers, and educators and is one of the world's largest publishers of scientific information in the physical sciences. Offering partnership solutions for scientific societies and for similar organizations in science and engineering, AIP is a leader in the field of electronic publishing of scholarly journals. AIP publishes 12 journals (some of which are the most highly cited in their respective fields), two magazines, including its flagship publication Physics Today; and the AIP Conference Proceedings series. Its online publishing platform Scitation hosts nearly two million articles from more than 185 scholarly journals and other publications of 28 learned society publishers.
About KBART
KBART (Knowledge Bases And Related Tools) was set up following the 2007 publication of the UKSG research report "Link Resolvers and the Serials Supply Chain.” Central to the efficient operation of the OpenURL is the knowledge base, which consists of data supplied by content providers including publishers. The report found that a lack of awareness of the OpenURLs capabilities and requirements is impacting the quality and timeliness of data provided to populate knowledge bases, and thus undermining the potential of the sophisticated OpenURL technology. UKSG partnered with NISO to commission the KBART Working Group to develop guidelines for best practice and provide educational materials. The core NISO/UKSG Working Group consists of representatives from libraries, knowledge base developers, publishers, intermediaries and other content providers, and is supported by a monitoring group of interested parties. Its Phase I report (KBART Recommended Practice (NISO RP-9-2010) and guidelines have been widely reviewed and tested by a wider group of information supply chain stakeholders. For more information, visit www.uksg.org/kbart or www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart.
About NISO
NISO fosters the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate the creation, persistent management, and effective interchange of information so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages libraries, publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization, management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire lifecycle of an information standard. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). More information about NISO is available on its website: www.niso.org. For more information please contact NISO on (301) 654-2512 or via email on nisohq@niso.org.
About UKSG
UKSG exists to connect the information community and encourage the exchange of ideas on scholarly communication. It spans the wide range of interests and activities of the extended scholarly information community of librarians, publishers, intermediaries and technology vendors. In a dynamic environment, UKSG works to:
- facilitate community integration, networking, discussion and exchange of ideas
- improve members' knowledge of the scholarly information sector and support skills development
- stimulate research and collaborative initiatives, encourage innovation and promote standards for good practice
- disseminate news, information and publications, and raise awareness of services that support the scholarly information sector.
