Developed by the buy and sell side global market leaders that make up RiXML.org, RiXML (Research Information eXtensible Mark-up Language) is an open standard designed for the improvement of electronic research distribution. The goal of RiXML.org is "to define an open protocol that will improve the process of categorizing, aggregating, comparing, sorting, searching and distributing global financial research".

RiXML enables sell side research publishers to tag any piece of research content, in any media format, with enough information for buy side firms to create customized filters, thereby reducing information overload. In addition, the advanced level of tagging and access to individual research elements allows for a new generation of alerting mechanisms, enhanced user interfaces and delivery to mobile devices.

A global steering committee of RiXML.org sets the overall strategy, and a separate standards committee with knowledge of research content and how it will be used, is at the core of the RiXML development process. It identifies the research components to be classified by the standard, and then delivers business requirements to the technical working group and steering committee.

The creation and utilisation of RiXML as a common language provides a low cost way to vastly improve the value of broker investment research. The primary objective of the RiXML specification is to provide extensive capabilities for tagging any piece of financial research content, in any form or media, with sufficient metadata information to allow research users to search, sort, and filter the published research and to provide highly relevant information.

In using RiXML as the standard, brokers (sell side) will benefit because:

• The value of their research will be enhanced (since it will get to the right people at the right time)
• The publishing method will be unified
• Branding will be enhanced
• Content and delivery can be customised

For asset managers (buy side), the RiXML standard will offer the following benefits:

• The ability to filter information
• Enhanced search tools
• Co-mingling of research from all sources
• Personalisation
• Increased relevancy

The overall benefits of using RiXML include:

• Maximising the value of research by making it more manageable
• Reducing information overload
• Increasing efficiency of distribution
• Improving access to research by standardising sorting and filtering criteria
• Providing a flexible approach for distributing and acquiring research