The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has published an updated version of the Transfer Code of Practice, NISO RP-24-2019, Transfer. This NISO Recommended Practice provides voluntary guidelines for publishers to follow when transferring journal titles between parties to ensure that the journal content remains easily accessible by librarians and readers. The Transfer initiative aims to promote a set of standards that apply under transferring conditions, and to encourage the industry to embrace these as a baseline level of quality and performance. The recommended practice document consists of several agreed overarching principles; specific roles and responsibilities for transferring and receiving publishers in various areas of work; and an extensive glossary of terms.
According to James Phillpotts, Head of Content Delivery, Digital at Oxford University Press and co-chair of the NISO Transfer Standing Committee, the Transfer Code of Practice is concerned primarily with digital content and associated online access. This is the fourth version of the Code since it was first published in 2007, and thus represents its ability to address current considerations in the scholarly journals community. Publishers and platform providers have a vested interest in ensuring that their content remains accessible, and the Transfer Code provides them with the specifics of how they can make sure that all of their stakeholders can make content available with the least amount of disruption.
In addition to the published NISO Transfer Code of Practice, the Transfer Alerting Service (TAS) is an online notification service hosted at the ISSN International Centre which features a searchable database of journal transfers that have taken place and an email alert system which posts to subscribers when transfers are executed.
In the new revision of the Code of Practice, updates have been made to clarify and address categories of paid customers beyond subscribers, open access considerations, perpetual access responsibilities, licensing information, and further revisions to handling journal URLs and redirects.
The updated NISO Transfer Code of Practice is available for download at https://www.niso.org/publications/rp-24-2019-transfer.
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