The National Information Standards Organization and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers have published Recommended Practice Journal Article Versions (JAV): Recommendations of the NISO/ALPSP JAV Technical Working Group.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
The publication is designed to provide a simple, practical way of describing the versions of scholarly journal articles that typically appear online before, during, and after formal journal publication. . . .
"Static, single copies of research papers that are essentially facsimiles of a single, unambiguously identified printed document are a thing of the past," stated Bernard Rous, Deputy Director of Publications at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Co-Chair of the JAV Working Group. "Changes in the way we create, produce, and store articles lead to multiple versions that are often all discovered together through web searches. Our working group addressed the consequent problem: how to identify the versions retrieved and clarify the relationships among them." . . .
Several variables were considered as possible dimensions to identify a particular article version:
- Time: from first draft to latest version
- Added Value: from rough draft to polished publication
- Manifestation/Rendition: different document formats and layouts
- Siblings: multiple mappings between technical reports, conference papers, lectures, journal articles, review articles, etc.
- Stakeholders: author, editor, referee, publisher, librarian, reader, funding organization
Components of the JAV Recommended Practice include a narrative that explains the project background and rationale for recommended terms and definitions, and appendices that cover "Graphical Representation of Journal Article Versions and Relationships with Formal and Grey Literature; Assumptions, Primary Challenges, and Best Practices," use cases, and comments from JAV Review Group on recommendations received on an earlier draft document.
