One revenue stream for publishers is secondary licensing to content

aggregators and syndicators. Companies such as LexisNexis and ProQuest

license content from many sources, then provide it to audiences who pay a

premium for access to a collection of timely mainstream content as well as

specialized content not freely available on the web. To better serve the

aggregators and syndicators and their audiences as well as streamline

production of their own web sites, major publishers are "XML-izing" their

production workflows.

Both the aggregators and the publishers are interested in moving to a

standard format in order to add new capabilities and to get away from the

vast number of different formats that they currently must deliver or

accept. But a key question is what metadata to add to the content and what

information in the content to mark up, in order to maximize revenue and

savings.

PRISM, is a metadata standard developed for describing content. In addition to the core PRISM specification, the PRISM group is releasing a DTD that will be used as the standard for publishers to follow when sending serial content and related metadata to aggregators and syndicators. This talk will provide a brief overview of the XML-ization of production workflows and the business of secondary licensing. It will also examine the business requirements that were developed for the PRISM Aggregator DTD -- what needs it addresses, what sticky issues arose and how pilot implementations are being rolled out.

More information may be found on PRISM at http://www.idealliance.org/standards_prism.asp