The NIST Information Services Office, also known as the NIST Research Library, manages publication of the NIST Technical Series publications.

The Information Services Office is proposing a new publication identifier (PubID) syntax – like those used by Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) – for all NIST Technical Series publications. This PubID syntax will facilitate simple, unique, and unambiguous publication referencing.

Currently, most NIST Technical Series publications – including NIST Special Publications (SP), NIST Interagency or Internal Reports (NISTIR), Technical Notes (TN), etc. – lack a structured publication identifier that can concisely and unambiguously identify each instance of a document. This can lead to users referencing the document in ways that are verbose, inconsistent, incomplete, or ambiguous. It can also hinder reference automation, which depends on the ability to uniquely identify publications.

The proposed PubID syntax can accommodate a variety of parameters that currently exist in identifiers across NIST Technical Series publications and includes a structure that is flexible and can meet the future needs of additional series and document development models.

The NIST Research Library encourages authors and other publication stakeholders to comment on this proposal.

Comments should be submitted to techpubs@nist.gov (Subject: “Publication ID Proposal”) by September 30, 2021.