NISO’s Open Access Metadata and Indicators draft is out for consultation. They’ve sensibly decided against designing a set of swishy graphic icons. Their proposal now seems to be for two simple bits of XML, that will each flag up a document as being open access…

““free to read” and “license reference” metadata will be encoded in XML, and included in existing metadata distribution channels and with the content itself where appropriate.” […] for example, in HTML META tags and in PDF files where bibliographic and other metadata are being included.”

Consultation deadline is 4th February 2014.