Journal Article Version Nomenclature: the NISO/ALPSP Recommendations

A 2005 paper by Sally Morris, then Chief Executive of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), on journal article version control was the impetus of a joint NISO/ALPSP working group to develop standard nomenclature for article versions. The working group developed 26 use cases, identifying the existing process used in each. Issues that had to be addressed were the level of granularity, whether to use words or numbers for the version nomenclature, avoiding scope drift into other document types, and focusing on today's technology and not possible future scenarios. The final report, Journal Article Versions: Recommendations of the NISO/ALPSP JAV Technical Working Group, defined these versions: author's original, submitted manuscript under review, accepted manuscript, proof, version of record, corrected version of record, and enhanced version of record. The fundamental principle underlying the recommended versions is to consider the status change of an article, not its content change. The author identifies several other projects underway or recently completed that also looked at the issue of journal versions.