Introduction to ONIX Metadata for Ebooks (and the Supply Chain)

Suggested Prerequisite

Before you read this, you might want to read:

• Introduction to Accessibility Metadata for Ebooks

You might know all about how to create and include Schema.org accessibility metadata (if not, take a look in the Next Steps below), and feel like you have got accessibility metadata handled! But, there is more metadata that can be created and included with your ebook. This other type of metadata is called ONIX. 

ONIX Metadata

ONIX is an XML-based standard for rich book metadata, providing a consistent way for publishers, retailers and their supply chain partners to communicate a wide range of information about their products. It is a commercial data format, designed to be used globally, and not limited to any one language or the characteristics of a specific national book trade. It’s widely used throughout the book and e-book supply chain in North America, Europe and Australasia, and is increasingly being adopted in the Asia Pacific region and South America too.

An ONIX record is a separate XML file that is sometimes packaged together with an ebook, and sometimes left separate, but either way, it is distributed alongside an ebook. It contains all kinds of metadata about a book, like title, author, edition, page count, etc. And, as you may suspect since you are on the Accessible Publishing Learning Network, it also has a set of accessibility metadata. 

Here it is packaged together with other files that make up an EPUB:

The Importance of ONIX

ONIX records can be used to describe product features for the book supply chain, and can be sent from the publisher or creator of the EPUB file/digital book to those who will make the products available for sale, lending or subscription. 

It is estimated that making your digital content more accessible might increase the number of potential readers by 10 or 15%, so if you have gone to all the trouble of improving the accessibility of your titles, then you should use your metadata to highlight this!

Example

This example shares the accessibility metadata section of an ONIX file. You’ll notice that the features are in pairs: ProductFormFeature, which always has a value of 09, and ProductFormFeatureValue, which varies. 

Feature type 09 simply means that the Feature value is taken from List 196, which lists the “E-publication Accessibility Details”. The numbers under ProductFormFeatureValue correspond to numbers on List 196. Let’s take a look at an example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ONIXMessage xmlns="http://ns.editeur.org/onix/3.0/reference" release="3.0">
<Header>
<Sender>
<SenderName>Pretend Publisher</SenderName>
</Sender>
</Header>
<Product>
<DescriptiveDetail>
<ProductFormFeature>
<ProductFormFeatureType>09</ProductFormFeatureType>
<ProductFormFeatureValue>10</ProductFormFeatureValue> 
</ProductFormFeature>
<ProductFormFeature>
<ProductFormFeatureType>09</ProductFormFeatureType>
<ProductFormFeatureValue>11</ProductFormFeatureValue>
</ProductFormFeature>
<ProductFormFeature>
<ProductFormFeatureType>09</ProductFormFeatureType>
<ProductFormFeatureValue>13</ProductFormFeatureValue>
</ProductFormFeature>
</DescriptiveDetail>
</Product>
</ONIXMessage>

You can take a look at Code List 196 to learn what accessibility features the numbers 10, 11, and 13 (the values for “ProductFormFeatureValue” in each pair) correspond to!