Michael Jubb at the Research Information Network blogs about the new journal version standards released by the NISO/ALPSP JAV Technical Working Group (seriously?). I'm all for standards, even if they appear a bit late, and slightly anachronistic.
I'm not sure how long we, as a society, will continue saying something is finished, especially items like "journal" articles. The standards presume a publication date, even if they've changed the terminology:
"Journal articles record the 'minutes of science' and are intended as a fixed record
of a body of work at a moment in time chosen by the scholar. This leads us to the Version of Record as a useful definition for formalizing academic achievement."
I'm disappointed to see that they dropped concepts, such as "siblings" (related papers on the same subject, probably using the same research), which could have made some review much easier. I also think it has limited the long-term use of the terms given the relatively rapid pace at which the means of dissemination of knowledge is changing, esp. compared to the length of time it took them to come up with the standards.
The report definitely deserves more than the quick reading I've given it. The current version is less than 27 pages, and still manages to introduce the terms, their definitions, and includes some of the formal discussions that took place during the process.
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