NFAIS Releases Best Practices for Publishing Journal Articles
Philadelphia, PA, February 23, 2009 - The National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) announced today the release of their Best Practices for Publishing Journal Articles. In development for more than a year by a Working Group under the leadership of Linda Beebe, Senior Director, PsycINFO, and including representatives from primary and secondary publishing as well as from the library community - the document provides guidelines for bibliographic policies that apply not only to article-by-article digital publishing, but also to the more traditional article publishing processes.
"An increasing number of publishers are moving to article-by-article publishing," said Beebe, Chair of the Working Group and a past NFAIS President, "but the protocols that are being used to deliver the content vary widely. And the new practices that are emerging are beginning to have a significant impact throughout the Information Community - on primary and secondary publishers, librarians, authors and users. Thus far, there has not been a commonly accepted standard for this type of publishing and this void has raised some serious issues for all of us. The NFAIS Best Practices were developed to fill that void as well as to reinforce the need for uniform bibliographic policies in the more traditional publishing process."
Beebe noted that the need for a Best Practices document grew out of an NFAIS Roundtable discussion on this topic that was sponsored by the American Psychological Association/PsycINFO in late 2007. A group of interested information professionals from the publishing and library communities met to share their experiences in handling digital article-by-article publishing and they identified a set of common concerns that they believe needed to be addressed - such as the need to know when a specific journal issue is closed; what document is to be considered the article/issue of record; how to easily identify publishing gaps and duplicate articles; how to ensure that errata are not overlooked; how to avoid the use of diverse pagination across media (print, online) for the same article; how to identify the length of an article in the absence of traditional pagination, etc.
Beebe noted that even in today's digital environment, the information community uses terminology and concepts that have their roots firmly embedded in centuries of print publishing. "Terms such as "article, "issue", "page number," etc. are all conceptual artifacts," she said, "yet each element was created to serve a specific purpose. For example, page numbers act as article locators, and page ranges indicate the amount of information contained in an article or issue. One goal of the Working Group was to identify the rationale for the traditional journal elements and determine what role, if any, the elements would serve as publishing becomes increasingly article-based."
The first draft of their work was approved by the NFAIS Assembly in August 2008, but the Working Group revised the document in response to the many thoughtful comments that were supplied during the voting process. As a result the guidelines were expanded to apply to all journal article publishing processes and the revised document was approved on February 13, 2009. Beebe noted that NFAIS will now circulate this set of Best Practices to other industry organizations for discussion and possible further refinement. "Our hope, she said, "is that the final product will be an industry-wide set of Best Practices related to publishing journal articles in electronic form, particularly those released article-by-article."
Founded in 1958, NFAIS is a membership organization of more than 60 of the world's leading producers of databases and related information services, information technology, and library services in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, business, and the arts and humanities. For more information on NFAIS, and its member organizations, contact Jill O'Neill, Director of Communication and Planning (jilloneill@nfais.org or (215)-893-1561) or visit the NFAIS web site (www.nfais.org).
