NISO RP-30-2020, Manuscript Exchange Common Approach (MECA)
Abstract
Approved June 26, 2020
Authors experience loss of time and effort when their manuscript is rejected by a journal and they have to repeat the submission process with one or more subsequent journals. In addition, it is estimated that 15 million hours of researcher time is wasted each year repeating reviews on subsequent journals. Both of these industry challenges could be addressed if journals and publishers had a way to transfer manuscripts seamlessly between publications using different submission and peer review tracking systems.
With the growth of cascading workflows, manuscripts may be transferred within a publishing group. A growing challenge is to transfer the manuscript (and, optionally, peer review data) across publishers and manuscript systems and even to and from preprint servers. There are many manuscript management systems, especially when including publishers’ custom-built systems.
A group of manuscript/management suppliers and publishers have worked to develop a common approach that can be widely adopted across the industry.
