OpenAthens joins as member of National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
OpenAthens joins NISO.
Founded in 1939, NISO is a non-profit membership organization, accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), whose mission is to build knowledge, foster discussion, and advance authoritative standards development through collaboration among the cultural, scholarly, scientific, and professional communities. Through NISO, all these communities are able to collaborate on mutually accepted standards and solutions that enhance their operations today and form a foundation for the future.
We have worked together on projects before, including on the two-year RA21 initiative which delivered a set of recommended practices. When RA21 was replaced by Seamless Access in 2019, we continued to work with NISO and other organizations on the new initiative’s steering committee and advisory and outreach committee. We also participated in several NISO-led webinars and we are represented on the NISO Plus 2021 planning committee. NISO’s executive director, Todd Carpenter was a plenary speaker at the OpenAthens 2019 conference.
Recently NISO announced its three-year strategic plan, which focuses on four key themes: Diversity and Inclusion; Trendsetting; Standards Development for Content and Technology; and Community Development.
Voting Members of NISO must support its goals, which are to initiate, develop, maintain, and publish technical standards in the information industry. Furthermore, members are expected to understand and influence NISO standards, helping to ensure their own products both follow industry best practices and meet the customers’ needs.
We join NISO’s roster of well-respected member organizations, as a voting member which allows us to have a voice at the table’, and to participate in the discussion, debate, and decision-making about technological advances in information management. This includes the opportunity to join multiple NISO working groups and committees, and to stand for election for the NISO Board.
Todd Carpenter, Executive Director of NISO welcomes our support, saying:
“OpenAthens is a well-known and highly respected business in the information industry, which has gone above and beyond to show that it exemplifies the highest standards when rolling out new products and helping customers". “We are delighted to welcome the OpenAthens team to our membership and are happy that they will be able to contribute fully to our ongoing discussions about future technical standards for the knowledge sector.”
Jon Bentley, Commercial Director at OpenAthens, commented:
“We have seen tremendous growth over the past few years, especially in North America, so we are excited to participate in NISO’s important work on standards development, as well as contributing to the NISO Plus 2021 conference and NISO webinars, and more." “Supporting and innovating for the future, and providing excellent customer service, are all part of OpenAthens’ key values. We are incredibly happy to contribute to the work of NISO and continue our work as market leaders in the access management domain.”
Interested in finding out more about NISO?
To find out more about about NISO’s work please visit their website.