<ali:license_ref>

License Reference (NISO Access License and Indicators)

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

Remarks

This element is defined in NISO RP-22-2015 Access License and Indicators 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 License and 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

content-type Type of Content
id Document Internal Identifier
specific-use Specific Use
start_date Start Date
xml:base Base
xmlns:ali NISO ALI Namespace (NISO Access License and Indicators)

Content Model

<!ELEMENT  ali:license_ref  
                        %license-ref-model;                          >

Expanded Content Model

(#PCDATA)

Description

Text, numbers, or special characters

This element may be contained in:

<license>

Example 1

This document has and always will have a 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>
...

Example 2

The document has an “open license” from examplesite.org starting on February 3, 2015. There is no license information available before that 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>
...

Example 3

An example of licensing and usage rights changing over time. The content is under a proprietary license from psychoceramics.org at first (February 3, 2014; initial publication) and then under a CC BY license a year later:
  
...
<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>
...

Journal Publishing Tag Library NISO JATS Version 1.2 (ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2019)

Version of May 2019

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