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PRISM Publishing Industry Metadata Specification Version 1.2 Released

New Version of PRISM Specification Made Available to Support Growing Number of Implementations

Alexandria, VA - January 4, 2005 - PRISM (Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata), an IDEAlliance Working Group, today announces the availability of the newest version of the PRISM Specification.

Since the 2002 release of the PRISM 1.1 specification, more and more publishers, integrators and software vendors have recognized its value and incorporated it into their content and information management strategies. Implementation experience by companies such as Time Inc. led to ideas for new vocabulary terms, and a desire to incorporate PRISM into RSS 1.0 feeds also led to updates to the specification. PRISM 1.2 was developed in direct response to the new requirements of the implementation community.

PRISM defines a set of XML metadata vocabularies that help to automate the repetitive tasks performed by systems that access, manage, track and re-purpose content. The PRISM Specification and the associated PRISM Aggregator DTD make it easier for organizations to locate, syndicate, acquire, and exchange magazine and journal articles, catalogs, images, and other publishable content distributed across multiple repositories. Along with the new PRISM 1.2 specification, the PRISM Working Group has also posted a corresponding update to the PRISM Aggregator DTD.

According to David Steinhardt, President and CEO of IDEAlliance, "Over the past year, the PRISM standard has gained traction as companies have begun to use it in actual production environments. The experience that has been gained through the growing number of PRISM implementations has enabled us to refine the specification and improve its usability. Moving forward, the PRISM Specification will be modularized so that it can more easily serve as the basis for extending IDEAlliance publishing content metadata standardization efforts. We welcome any publishers who are learning more about the value of metadata for asset management to participate in upcoming PRISM standardization efforts."

According to Bob DuCharme, Consulting Software Engineer at PRISM member company LexisNexis, "The expanded vocabulary of PRISM 1.2 and the greater ease with which it can be used in both RDF-based and non-RDF applications will make it even more useful to a wider range of publishers, aggregators, and developers involved in electronic publishing."

In addition to the posting of PRISM 1.2, two specifications related to PRISM 1.2 have been posted in the "Contributed Resources" area of the PRISM website. These resources, an RSS 1.0 module for PRISM 1.2 and an RDF schema for PRISM 1.2, were developed by Nature Publishing Group, a leading science publisher, and will be useful in a wide variety of publishing domains. Although these resources were developed outside the PRISM Working Group, they are being posted because they may provide value to the PRISM 1.2 implementation community. The Nature Group is currently adding PRISM metadata to the RSS 1.0 feeds for many of their titles. (See http://www.nature.com/rss). PRISM-based technology is also being used on the CiteULike service (http://www.citeulike.org/), which lets researchers add and search metadata about academic papers.

The specification is currently available at:

http://www.prismstandard.org/specifications/Prism1[1].2.pdf.

Comments and questions should be posted to info@prismstandard.org.

About Nature Publishing Group

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is the scientific publishing arm of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, combining the excellence of Nature, Nature Research Journals, Nature Reviews Journals, NPG Academic Journals and NPG Reference publications, to provide the world's premier information resource for the basic biological and physical sciences. NPG is a global company, with headquarters in London and offices in Paris, Munich, New Delhi, Tokyo, Melbourne, San Diego, San Francisco, Washington, New York and Boston. See http://npg.nature.com/ for further information.

About the PRISM Working Group

PRISM, (Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata) is an IDEAlliance (International Digital Enterprise Alliance) Working Group. The member companies are involved in content - creation, categorization, management, aggregation and distribution - both commercially and within intranet and extranet frameworks. Their interest in PRISM comes from the need for a common metadata standard as a basic part of the content infrastructure. The PRISM Working Group is open to all IDEAlliance members and includes: Adobe Systems, Inc., Cadmus Professional Communications, CMP Media, LLC, , Gruner + Jahr USA Publishing, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., (HFM), Hearst Magazines, L A Burman Associates Inc., LexisNexis™, a division of Reed Elsevier plc., Wolters Kluwer Health a division of Wolters Kluwer North America, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., Oracle Corporation, OverDrive, Inc. Platts, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., Publishing Connections Inc.(PCI), Sheridan Press, Taxonomy Strategies, Time Inc., and Vodafone Global Products. To learn more, go to www.prismstandard.org or www.idealliance.org.

About IDEAlliance

IDEAlliance (International Digital Enterprise Alliance) is a not-for-profit membership organization. Its mission is to advance user-driven, cross-industry solutions for all publishing and content-related processes by developing standards, fostering business alliances, and identifying best practices. IDEAlliance has been a leader in information technology since 1966 (founded as Graphic Communications Association) having fostered the development and adoption of standards such as ADIS, DISC, GRACoL, ICE, JIFFI, Mail.dat, papiNet, PRISM, PROSE XML, SPACE XML, SGML, and XML. Learn more about IDEAlliance at www.idealliance.org.

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