Bibased

Bibased is a proposed open standard for bibliographic metadata exchange and scholarly information representation. It aims to provide a unified, machine-readable model that can accommodate bibliographic records, citations, authorship data, and related scholarly objects across different systems. The term Bibased is a portmanteau of bibliographic and based, signaling its focus on grounding metadata in a common, interoperable foundation.

Technical design and scope emphasize modularity and extensibility. The core model outlines essential fields such as title, authors, publication date, identifiers (DOI, ISBN, ISSN), publisher, language, and format. It also supports relationships between works (editions, translations, serials) and between agents (authors, editors, institutions). Bibased favors interoperable serializations, including JSON-LD, RDF, and XML, and uses stable URIs for entities to enable linkable data. It promotes the use of established vocabularies and ontologies such as Dublin Core, BIBO (Bibliographic Ontology), and schema.org to describe elements and relationships.

Governance and development process are typically described as open and collaborative. A community consortium or standards body oversees revisions, with working groups focusing on areas like identifiers, authority control, rights metadata, and privacy considerations. Pilot implementations and reference implementations are encouraged to demonstrate real-world interoperability.

Adoption and examples of use include library catalogs, institutional repositories, publisher platforms, and reference-management tools. Proponents argue that Bibased could reduce metadata fragmentation, improve discovery, and enable more robust citation analytics. Critics note potential migration costs, the need for consensus on governance, and concerns about data privacy and ownership. As with many open standards, successful adoption depends on ongoing collaboration among libraries, publishers, researchers, and technology providers.