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<ali:license_ref> License Reference (NISO and Access License Indicators)

A reference to a URI that carries the license terms specifying how a work may be used.

Usage/Remarks

This element is defined in NISO RP-22-2021, Access & License Indicators (2021 Revision) Recommended Practice.
Date Attributes
A given document may contain more than one <ali:license_ref>, with a @start_date attribute used to differentiate.
Related Elements
JATS has several elements that deal with the usage, permissions, and licensing. Some of these elements are taken from the NISO Access and License Indicators (ALI) 2015 Recommended Practice specification. The other element is JATS-specific and predates the NISO recommendation:
  • <ali:free_to_read> — This NISO ALI element is a simple flag whose presence indicates that the document is free-to-read, without making statements about any additional reuse rights or restrictions. Date attributes can specify when the document is free to be read.
  • <ali:license_ref> — This NISO ALI element points to a public license or waiver. By “public”, NISO means that the offer is generally and not privately offered. Such a license may be either human or machine-readable text that explains the terms of use or reuse for the content.
  • <license> — A JATS-specific element whose content describes a set of conditions under which the content may be used, accessed, and distributed. This element was provided to hold the license text. The 2015 NISO ALI recommendation is to store in the XML document a URI that points to the license instead of the full license text. For users who adopt the NISO ALI recommendation, the <license> element could be used to hold a short representation of the license, a sentence or two to be used for display. Alternatively, a publisher could choose not to implement NISO ALI and to put the text of the license in <license>.
    The <license> element takes the @xlink:href attribute to point to the text of the license. However, the new NISO ALI element <ali:license_ref> performs the same pointing function. JATS best practice is to omit the @xlink:href attribute from <license> if a NISO ALI <ali:license_ref> is used.
Attributes
applies_to
content-type
specific-use
start_date

Base Attributes

id
xml:base

Namespaces

xmlns:ali (fixed value = http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/)
Models and Context
May be contained in
<license>
Description
Text, numbers, or special characters
Content Model
<!ELEMENT  ali:license_ref  
                        %license-ref-model;                          >
Expanded Content Model

(#PCDATA)

Tagged Samples
CC BY license 
...
<permissions>
 <license>
  <ali:license_ref xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/">
   http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/</ali:license_ref>
 </license>
</permissions>
...
License with a start date 
...
<permissions>
 <license>
  <ali:license_ref xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" start_date="2015-02-03">
   http://www.examplesite.org/open_license.html</ali:license_ref>
 </license>
</permissions>
...
Licensing and usage rights changing over time 
...
<permissions>
 <license>
  <ali:license_ref xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" start_date="2014-02-03">
   http://www.psychoceramics.org/license_v1.html</ali:license_ref>
  <ali:license_ref xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" start_date="2015-02-03">
   http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/</ali:license_ref>
 </license>
</permissions>
...