What are National Occupational Standards?
National Occupational Standards are benchmarks of performance. They provide the means for assessing performance in a job: they are work-related statements of the ability, knowledge, understanding and experience that an individual should have to carry out key tasks effectively. Anyone in an occupation covered by Standards can use them to determine what level of competence is required and more importantly whether their own performance meets that industry expectation. Find out more in the introduction to the Standards (Word document).
What do the Standards cover?
You can download the Standards as Word documents below. They are divided up into different areas of publishing. Feel free to copy and paste what you need into other documents or tailor them to your own organisation (but bear in mind that once you do that, they cease to be the National Occupational Standards).
Early in 2005 the Standards underwent a significant overhaul in order to take into account issues surrounding electronic publishing.
- Unit List (file size: 51KB)
- Units 1-4: Commissioning and acquisitions (file size: 153KB)
- Units 5-9: Rights (file size: 116KB)
- Units 10-12: Contracts (file size: 70KB)
- Units 13-15: Design (visual) (file size: 109KB)
- Units 16-18: Editorial management (file size: 127KB)
- Units 19-21: Design (structural) (file size: 88KB)
- Units 22-25: Editing (file size: 343KB)
- Units 26-32: Production (file size: 162KB)
- Units 33-39: Marketing and direct sales (file size: 378KB)
- Glossary (file size: 89KB)
We also offer the Technical Communicator Standards (downloadable Word document).
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