NISO Releases Draft Recommended Practice on Exchanging Serial Content for Public Comment

Baltimore, MD - November 4, 2014 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is seeking comments on the draft recommended practice Protocol for Exchanging Serial Content (PESC), NISO RP-23-201x. This Recommended Practice was developed to provide guidance on the best way to manage all of the elements of digital serial content packaging in a manner that aids both the content provider and the content recipient in understanding what has been delivered and received.
"As part of their missions, many different organizations—libraries, archives, indexing services, content aggregators, publishers, and content creators—need to exchange and work with digital files that make up serial content," states Leslie Johnston, Director of Digital Preservation, National Archives and Records Administration, and Co-chair of the NISO PESC Working Group. "When digital serial content is exchanged, the files that comprise a serial "publication" are packaged together in some manner and these packages can be highly variable. Currently, there is no standardized packaging format that addresses the level of specificity and granularity needed and the PESC Recommended Practice was developed to fill this gap."

"The recommendations in this document describe preferred practices for the packaging and exchange of serial content to enable the automation of processes to receive and manage serial content at scale," explains Kimberly A. Tryka, Research Data Librarian, National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST), and Co-chair of the NISO PESC Working Group. "By following these practices, organizations can make it clear what content has been transmitted, how it is organized, and what processing is required when a new package is received."

"NISO is soliciting feedback on this draft Recommended Practice from any organization that needs to exchange serial publication information," states Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director for Programs. "This feedback will be used to make any needed revisions to the document before final publication of the recommendations."

The draft recommended practice is open for public comment through December 5, 2014. To download the draft or submit online comments, visit the Protocol for Exchanging Serial Content (PESC) Working Group webpage at: www.niso.org/workrooms/pesc/

About NISO
NISO fosters the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate the creation, persistent management, and effective interchange of information so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages libraries, publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization, management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire lifecycle of an information standard. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). More information about NISO is available on its website: www.niso.org.