ONIX for Books Release 1.0 was published in 2000. Revisions were made in releases 1.1, 1.2 and 1.2.1.
Release 2.0 was issued in 2001. A backward-compatible version, Release 2.1, arrived in June 2003. Three minor revisions intended for general use have been made since then, the most recent in January 2006. A further revision intended solely for use in Japan was issued in 2010.
Release 3.0 was published in April 2009 with some corrections in 2010, and the first minor revision (labelled 3.0.1) was issued in January 2012. A second minor revision (3.0.2) was published in January 2014 and a third in April 2016. The latest version is 3.0.7, released in October 2019, and the standard continues to evolve to meet new business requirements as they emerge. This 3.0 release has not yet completely replaced 2.1, though implementation of 3.0 is widespread and continuing to grow. There is also an Acknowledgement message format (published in 2015) that recipients of ONIX data files may send to confirm receipt of ONIX messages.
The authors have stated that any new revisions will be based on, and backward-compatible with, Release 3.0.[1] The international steering committee announced in January 2012 that support for version 2.1 would be reduced at the end of December 2014.
Releases 2.1 and 3.0 share a set of 'Codelists', or controlled vocabularies, that are extended regularly to allow new types of information to be carried out without having to revise the main specifications. From Issue 37 of the controlled vocabularies, additions apply only to ONIX 3.0, and ONIX 2.1 is limited to Issue 36 or earlier.