EDItEUR releases latest ONIX 3.1 revision 3

This month, EDItEUR — the organization that manages the ONIX for Books standard, among others — announced the release of ONIX 3.1 revision 3:

There are four main additions, each the result of requests from ONIX data users, but the revision retains full backward compatibility with earlier revisions of 3.1. All existing valid ONIX 3.1 files are automatically valid 3.1.3 files too. The attached change note summarises the updates:

the addition of a new optional <TextSource> composite within <TextContent> to specify the name and other details of a reviewer or endorser

inclusion of <SubjectDescription> within <NameAsSubject> (these changes increase the similarities between <NameAsSubject>, <TextSource> and <Contributor>)

addition of inverted <PublisherName> and <ImprintName> (which improves their alignment with <CorporateName>, and allows extra alphabetical sorting options in languages like French)

changes that affect a number of fields that can contain multilingual metadata. These fields allow translations and now also transliterations of text (and these changes are likely to be extended to other multilingual data fields in a future update)

EDItEUR encourages all ONIX 3.1 users to update to the new schema files, even if they are not yet adopting any of the new features of 3.1.3.

And they remind us that many data recipients no longer accept ONIX 2.1, or will end its use within a month or two. Remaining archived documentation and the ONIX codelist browser for 2.1 will finally be taken offline at the end of March 2026.

The ONIX 3.1 Specification, the Implementation and Best Practice Guide and various schema files available from EDItEUR have been updated and are available for download:

• ONIX for Books specification & most recent codelists release (PDF in .zip)

• ONIX for Books specification & most recent codelists release & Best Practice Guide (HTML in .zip RECOMMENDED — includes Specification)

• Read the full release announcement and list of changes from 3.1.1 to 3.1.3 here.

• For full background, an overview of the message structure, and a summary of key differences between Release 2.1 and Release 3.0/3.1, read the Introduction to ONIX for Books 3.1 here.

Further reading

If you're selling books in Europe, print or digital, and don't yet know about or understand how European regulations and directives are different and will affect your ability to sell in that market within the next year, you need to start asking questions. For more information, check out BookNet’s ever-updating list of Collected Resources Relating to European Union (EU) Legislation.

If you're interested in keeping up-to-date with bibliographic standards, visit BookNet’s User Documentation.