From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 09:14:00 +0100 People on this list may have forgotten this rather important question from Robert Kiley. At least I thought it was important especially because in my experience many publishers are very poor at making clear on their sites their policies regarding their VOR. I consulted with Ed Pentz of CrossRef. Here is his reply: "Robert's question is whether AOP and VOR are "identical" but the more fundamental issue is whether the AOP is the VOR. I'm sure in some cases the AOP and VOR are identical and in others they aren't - some publishers probably consider the AOP the VOR while others don't. The key issue with something having a CrossMark is that whatever the version the publisher is committed to maintain it and use CrossMark to provide alerts of any MAJOR changes that would effect the crediting or interpretation of the work. CrossMark actually focuses on the "publisher-maintained version" which is often the Version of Record but can be an AOP version. In the current version of CrossMark there is no version statement or mention of "version of record" since users didn't know what that meant and publishers had varying meanings of it as well." Ed has agreed for this reply to be made public and he is also on the list and can answer follow up questions. Anthony -----Original Message----- From: "Kiley, Robert" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 30 May 2012 13:35:31 +0100 Dear List members Does anyone know whether there is any difference between an "ahead of print" (AOP) publication and a "version of record" (VOR) publication? Typically an AOP article may not include metadata like issue and page numbers - but other than this, can the AOP always be considered as identical to the VoR? I looked at the NISO Journal Article Versions document ( http://www.niso.org/publications/rp/RP-8-2008.pdf) but couldn't see any reference to the AOP version. Many thanks Robert Robert Kiley Head of Digital Services Wellcome Library mailto:[log in to unmask] Library Web site: http://library.wellcome.ac.uk