NISO Announces Publication of its New Recommended Practice for Content Platform Migrations
The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) today announced the publication of its Recommended Practice, NISO RP-38-2021, Content Platform Migrations, which provides guidance to improve processes and communication between all parties, with suggested steps involved before, during, and after the migration of content from one platform to another.
Content platforms, either developed by publishers themselves, or licensed from platform vendors, enable libraries and their patrons to access and interact with scholarly content. Every year, for a variety of reasons, publishers move their content from one platform to another. Making migrations as smooth as possible — with no broken links, loss of functionality, interruptions in access, or loss of customer information — significantly benefits librarians, publishers, service providers, and users alike. This new Recommended Practice, developed by the librarians, publishers, and content platform providers on the Content Platform Migrations Working Group, intends to streamline the process and clarify the communications needed to ensure seamless transitions. The final version incorporates feedback received from the wider community during the public comment period earlier this year.
“The Content Platform Migrations Recommended Practice is a true community effort to ensure that migrations between platforms are as smooth as possible,” said Working Group Co-Chair Athena Hoeppner of the University of Central Florida. “It incorporates the views of all the key stakeholder groups involved in the process — libraries, publishers, service providers, and especially users. Project participants agreed that improved communication between parties, to best support a user’s journey to content, was the ultimate goal of their work.”
“Athena, I, and the whole Working Group are delighted that this Recommended Practice is now published and available for those involved in content platform migrations,” added Co-Chair Kim Steinle of Duke University Press. “As content migration projects track many actions, timelines, and parties, the Recommendations could be applied differently depending on the specific content migration. All recommendations presented in the document will provide a complete understanding of the suggested actions, and we’ve also included customizable tools to help adapt the Recommendations to specific projects.”
“We are so grateful to Athena, Kim, and everyone in the Content Migrations Working Group for all their hard work on these recommendations,” said Todd Carpenter, NISO’s Executive Director. “As a result of their efforts, the information community can help ensure that the process for migrating content from one platform to another is more streamlined and effective for all concerned, and that user access to content through various tools and services is uninterrupted.”
The published version of the Recommended Practice for Content Platform Migrations is available on the NISO website at: https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/content-platform-migrations
About NISO
Based in Baltimore, MD, NISO 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) or contact us at nisohq@niso.org.
