23 Persistent Linking

Desired Result

The goal of this clause is to acknowledge the licensor’s responsibility to provide permanent and stable links to online content. By doing so, this clause codifies the shared understanding between licensor and licensee of how licensed content is accessed, used, and shared in academic and research workflows. It also contributes to upholding the integrity of citation and attribution, facilitating remote access, and tracking usage.

What it means

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) continues to be the industry standard in the development of the Open URL standard; American National Standards Institute – ANSI standard ANSI/NISO Z39.88.

Desired Language

Example clauses:

“Persistent Links. Where applicable, Licensor will provide and maintain persistent links to individual items within the Licensed Materials and make these available to Licensee. Licensor’s support for persistent linking shall include the ability to resolve in-bound and out-bound links using the OpenURL standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.88).” (NERL Model License 2016)

“Persistent Linking. Licensor will comply with the most current version of the OpenURL standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.88) and will provide a mechanism for persistent links to content.” (CRL Model License 2014)

Tricks & Traps

This clause is rarely negotiated. It is common to find similar language across model licenses.

Importance & Risk

Persistent linking is crucial for ensuring continuous and reliable access to online content. It ensures stable and reliable access to online content, which is foundational for academic and research workflows. The potential for broken or outdated links can lead to loss of access, disrupt academic and research workflows, and weaken the integrity of citations. Ensuring persistent linking helps maintain the stability and reliability of access, supports proper attribution, and facilitates seamless remote access for authorized users. Using persistent linking for purposes of usage statistics can also demonstrate a licensee’s compliance with the terms of the governing license agreement by limiting access only to authorized users. It can further demonstrate compliance that access is accomplished via an authenticated library interface which neither circumvents paywalls nor makes content accessible in an unauthorized manner.