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*[with apologies for cross-posting]*

July 6, 2020: Today sees the publication of NISO RP-30-2020, Manuscript
Exchange Common Approach (MECA) Recommended Practice
<https://www.niso.org/publications/rp-30-2020-meca> — an open protocol for
the transfer of manuscripts within and between manuscript systems. As well
as developing a common vocabulary, the MECA Working Group
<https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/meca> has also made specific
recommendations for transmitting, identifying, and packaging the content
being transferred.

An estimated 15 million hours are currently wasted each year
<https://www.aje.com/arc/peer-review-process-15-million-hours-lost-time/>
repeating reviews for articles that have been rejected — not to mention the
additional time spent re-submitting those articles.  The MECA Recommended
Practice, which incorporates feedback from the community, will improve this
frustrating and time-consuming experience for authors, reviewers, and
publishers alike. It covers the transfer of manuscripts and/or reviews
between submission systems, between preprint and submission systems, from
authoring systems to submission systems, and from submission systems to
services such as post acceptance processing systems.

Tony Alves, Director of Product Management, Aries Systems, and co-chair of
the Working Group, noted, “The MECA Recommended Practice will alleviate
some significant pain points for researchers, publishers, and service
providers. We welcome NISO’s  publication of our recommendations and hope
that they will be widely adopted and implemented by our community.”

The second co-chair, Stephen Laverick, Director, Green Fifteen Publishing
Consultancy, added, “We are grateful to everyone who took the time to
comment on the draft recommendations. We believe that they will make the
publishing process more efficient, to the benefit of everyone working with
production systems, preprint servers, and authoring services.”

NISO Executive Director, Todd Carpenter, commented, “The MECA Recommended
Practice is the result of many months of hard work by Tony, Stephen, and
the Working Group. We thank everyone for their contributions, and strongly
encourage our community to adopt their recommendations.”

The MECA Recommended Practice
<https://www.niso.org/publications/rp-30-2020-meca> is now freely available
to the community.

*About NISO*

NISO, based in Baltimore, Maryland, 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 information
standards. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American
National Standards Institute (ANSI). For more information, visit the NISO
website (https://niso.org).

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