Journal Article Versions (JAV)

Journal Article Versions (JAV) is the NISO/ALPSP-defined controlled vocabulary (NISO RP-8-2008) for distinguishing the successive states a scholarly journal article passes through between first draft and final publication. A document instance is properly labelled with a JAV term — Author's Original (AO), Submitted Manuscript Under Review (SMUR), Accepted Manuscript (AM), Proof (P), Version of Record (VoR), Corrected Version of Record (CVoR), or Enhanced Version of Record (EVoR) — based on where it sits in the peer-review and publication workflow, not on its file format or where it happens to be hosted; the same PDF hosted in three different repositories is still one JAV stage, and two files with identical content but different peer-review status are different JAV stages.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 23 Jul 2026

Worked examples

Is an instance

A manuscript an author uploads to a preprint server before submitting it to any journal is an Author's Original (AO) — not yet submitted for peer review.

Is an instance

The same manuscript, revised to incorporate reviewer comments and formally accepted by the journal editor, but before the publisher has copyedited or typeset it, is the Accepted Manuscript (AM) — the version most funder green-OA mandates (e.g. NIH Public Access Policy, UKRI, Plan S signatories) require or permit self-archiving of, often after an embargo.

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance

The publisher's typeset, paginated, DOI-bearing PDF of the same article is the Version of Record (VoR), not the Accepted Manuscript — even though the underlying scholarly content may be identical, the AM/VoR distinction turns on production status and publisher processing, not content.

Anyone who has worked with a journal article knows it exists as several distinct files across its lifecycle — a draft before submission, a version under peer review, a version after acceptance but before typesetting, and the final published PDF. Without a shared vocabulary for which is which, authors, repositories, funders, and publishers routinely talk past each other about “the manuscript” when they mean different things. Journal Article Versions (JAV) is the answer NISO and ALPSP jointly published to solve exactly this problem: a short, standard set of terms and definitions any repository, publisher agreement, or funder policy can reference unambiguously.

Where JAV comes from

JAV is NISO RP-8-2008, Journal Article Versions (JAV): Recommendations of the NISO/ALPSP JAV Technical Working Group, published April 1, 2008 by the U.S. National Information Standards Organization in partnership with ALPSP (the Association of Learned, Professional and Society Publishers). It is a NISO Recommended Practice (RP) rather than a full ANSI/NISO Standard — a lighter-weight, voting-member-reviewed document NISO uses for practices that are useful and broadly workable but haven’t gone through formal ANSI balloting. The Recommended Practice defines seven distinct version stages an article can occupy between an author’s first draft and its permanent, citable published form.

The seven JAV stages

Code	Name	What it is
AO	Author’s Original	The author’s own manuscript, before it has been submitted anywhere for formal review.
SMUR	Submitted Manuscript Under Review	The manuscript as submitted to a journal and currently undergoing peer review — may already differ from the AO if the author revised before submission.
AM	Accepted Manuscript (sometimes called Author’s Accepted Manuscript, AAM)	The version incorporating changes from peer review that the journal has formally accepted for publication, but before the publisher’s copyediting, typesetting, and formatting are applied.
P	Proof	The typeset version circulated to the author for final review before publication — formatted like the final article but not yet the version of record.
VoR	Version of Record	The formally published article as it appears in the journal — copyedited, typeset, paginated, and assigned its permanent citation and (typically) DOI.
CVoR	Corrected Version of Record	A VoR that has been corrected after publication (e.g. via a formal erratum or correction notice) without changing its fundamental identity as the published article.
EVoR	Enhanced Version of Record	A VoR that has been enhanced after publication with additional material — supplementary data, linked commentary, updated metadata — beyond what was in the original published version.

Why the distinction matters: green open access rights

JAV terminology exists for a practical reason, not a taxonomic one: which version of a manuscript an author is legally permitted to self-archive depends entirely on which JAV stage it is. Publisher self-archiving policies and funder open-access mandates are near-universally written in JAV terms (or terms mapped directly to them):

Most publisher agreements and repository policies permit or require depositing the Accepted Manuscript (AM) — often called the Author Accepted Manuscript — into an institutional or subject repository, frequently after an embargo period, because it carries the peer-reviewed scholarly content without reproducing the publisher’s own typesetting and formatting investment.
Depositing the Version of Record (VoR) is typically restricted to gold/hybrid open-access articles, or requires a separate licence, because the VoR embodies the publisher’s production work.
The Author’s Original (AO) and SMUR stages are almost always freely shareable by the author, since no publisher processing has occurred yet — this is the basis for preprint posting norms.

A repository manager, research administrator, or author who cannot correctly identify which JAV stage a given PDF represents cannot reliably determine what they’re allowed to do with it. This is precisely the ambiguity JAV was built to remove, and it is why funder green open-access policies — including the NIH Public Access Policy and UKRI’s open access policy — specify permitted deposit versions using AM/VoR language rather than vaguer terms like “final manuscript.”

JAV and citation clarity

Beyond rights management, JAV terminology also resolves a citation problem: content can genuinely differ between versions (a reviewer-requested correction between AM and VoR, or a post-publication erratum captured in a CVoR), so citing “the manuscript” without specifying which JAV stage is imprecise. NISO’s Access and License Indicators recommended practice (NISO RP-22-2021, ALI) reuses JAV-aligned values (vor, am) directly in its machine-readable metadata schema, and Crossref’s deposit metadata distinguishes the VoR as the canonical DOI target — both downstream uses depend on JAV having already established the underlying vocabulary.

Related CASRAI terms

Author Accepted Manuscript — the AM stage in depth, including green-OA embargo mechanics.
Version of Record (VoR) — the VoR stage in depth.
Preprint — typically an AO or SMUR-stage manuscript posted before or during peer review.

References

NISO RP-8-2008, Journal Article Versions (JAV): Recommendations of the NISO/ALPSP JAV Technical Working Group (niso.org)
NISO RP-22-2021, Access & License Indicators (niso.org)

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Journal Article Versions (JAV)"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/journal-article-versions-jav" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/journal-article-versions-jav",
  "name": "Journal Article Versions (JAV)",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/journal-article-versions-jav",
  "description": "Journal Article Versions (JAV) is the NISO/ALPSP-defined controlled vocabulary (NISO RP-8-2008) for distinguishing the successive states a scholarly journal article passes through between first draft and final publication. A document instance is properly labelled with a JAV term — Author's Original (AO), Submitted Manuscript Under Review (SMUR), Accepted Manuscript (AM), Proof (P), Version of Record (VoR), Corrected Version of Record (CVoR), or Enhanced Version of Record (EVoR) — based on where it sits in the peer-review and publication workflow, not on its file format or where it happens to be hosted; the same PDF hosted in three different repositories is still one JAV stage, and two files with identical content but different peer-review status are different JAV stages.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/publishing#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/journal-article-versions-jav",
  "sameAs": [
    "JAV",
    "Journal Article Versions"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-23T07:33:51",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}