IEC to modify bilingual structure of its standards

Two major improvements, taking effect from Monday 2 April 2007, are to occur in all new IEC publications relating to the layout of the bilingual English/French publications and to copyright notices. Existing publications are to be modified over the coming months.

Layout of bilingual publications
All new bilingual publications will be published with the English language content followed by the French language content. As a result, the interlacing of the English and French language pages is set to cease. This will help to simplify the publishing process, contributing to efficiency gains and cost savings.

It will enable all hyperlinks included in IEC working documents to be kept in the PDF files created and will facilitate the automatic generation of electronic bookmarks in the PDF files. This will maintain the IEC’s commitment to producing bilingual publications, without having any impact on the bilingual standards development process.

In addition, non-English and non-French mother tongue users of IEC Publications will continue to benefit from having both official IEC languages available in one publication for reference purposes.

Increasing the awareness of IEC copyright
As a result of the collaboration between the IEC and ISO aimed at enhancing the protection of intellectual property contained in International Standards and helping users understand the existence, importance and limitations of the use of IEC and ISO copyright, with effect from 2 April 2007, both organizations will feature a visible warning sign on page two of the cover of each new publication. The warning sign is accompanied by information as to how users can ask for additional rights.

In addition, the second page will also feature updated general information for the users of IEC publications.

IEC Central Office and ISO Central Secretariat have together produced an information brochure aimed at helping users of IEC and ISO International Standards understand copyright and demonstrating how they can use these IEC and ISO publications. This brochure is scheduled to be made available to all IEC members and experts in early April 2007.