The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has approved a new project to develop a common means to easily transfer manuscripts between and among manuscript systems, such as those in use at publishers and preprint servers. Those who work in manuscript-processing areas such as production systems, preprint servers, and authoring services are invited to actively engage in community development of a NISO Recommended Practice intended to alleviate pain points encountered by researchers as well as service providers operating in the scholarly ecosystem.
At present, in workflow processes such as manuscript rejection or alternate recommendations for article submission, there is no easy way for a manuscript to move programmatically from one publisher system to another's. The result is frustration for authors and reviewers who complain of wasted time, duplicative efforts, and delays in enabling access to novel research. An open protocol available for adoption across the industry would ease this process substantially and better support publishing operations and communication among all stakeholders.
A new NISO working group will continue the work in Manuscript Exchange Common Approach (MECA) which has been underway by a number of cooperating institutions, assembling a vocabulary to address common understandings and further developing aspects of packaging, tagging, identification, transfer of peer review data, and description of the transfer itself, among other issues.
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