Overview
ISO 12651-1:2012 - Electronic document management - Vocabulary - Part 1: Electronic document imaging provides a standardized vocabulary for the field of electronic document management (EDM). It defines terms and concepts used for electronic document imaging, including inputting technologies (scanning, OCR, forms), management technologies (document services, workflow), and storage technologies (optical/magnetic media). The vocabulary is intended to facilitate clear communication, implementation, translation, and interoperability across vendors, practitioners and languages.
Key topics
This part of ISO 12651 focuses on terminology and conventions rather than prescriptive technical specifications. Important technical topics covered include:
- Imaging and capture terms: scanning, digitize, flat-bed and aperture-card scanners, automatic document feeder.
- Recognition and indexing: OCR, automatic character recognition, indexing, forms overlay/removal.
- Image and file characteristics: image, electronic image, bitonal/continuous-tone, dpi, image resolution, grey scaling, halftone.
- Compression and formats: compression (lossy vs lossless), Group 3/4, Huffman coding, image compression/decompression and conversion.
- Quality and processing: deskewing, enhancement, edge enhancement, image acceptance sampling, dropout ink.
- Systems and services: EDMS, ECM, enterprise report management (ERM/COLD), image server.
- Storage and media: CD-ROM, CD-R, optical disk terminology, ablation (optical disk write defects).
- Standards and conventions: term formatting per ISO 10241-1 and ISO 1087-1; normative references (e.g., ISO/IEC 11544, ISO/IEC 10918-4, ISO 18901).
Note: The document defines terms to support interoperability and translation; it does not set numeric performance requirements.
Applications
ISO 12651-1:2012 is practical for anyone working with document imaging and electronic document management:
- Records and archives managers standardizing metadata and process language for digitization projects and backfile conversion.
- Scanning and digitization service providers ensuring consistent terminology with clients (e.g., dpi, bitonal, image acceptance sampling).
- Software vendors and system integrators implementing EDMS/ECM, OCR, and image servers who need common definitions for requirements and API design.
- Legal, compliance and quality teams drafting procurement specifications and SLAs that reference imaging concepts.
- Translators and technical writers producing multilingual documentation for document management systems.
Related standards
This vocabulary aids clear communication across EDM, document imaging, OCR and EDMS projects and is an important reference for technical specifications and procurement documents.
