VIM, as the “International vocabulary of metrology—Basic and general concepts and associated terms” is commonly abbreviated, and GUM, the “Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement,” are becoming the backbone documents of nowadays metrology; employing their guidance enables unambiguous communication and the production and interpretation of measurement results that are comparable, that is, traceable to the same reference, and whose compatibility and equivalence with other results can be established. The widespread application of these documents in various fields and even under dissimilar conditions makes the direct involvement of the users desirable in order to learn from their experience and about their needs. To this end, the Joint Committees for Guides in Metrology, JCGM, in which the eight signatory institutions BIPM, IEC, IFCC, ILAC, ISO, IUPAC, IUPAP, and OIML are represented, has prepared a survey on each of these documents. ACQUAL’s readers are invited to contribute to the surveys accessible from the website http://www.metrologyinfo.org.

GUM was first published in 1993 and was complemented with Supplement 1 “Propagation of distributions using a Monte Carlo method” in 2008; both documents are downloadable from http://www.bipm.org/en/publications/guides/gum.html as JCGM 100:2008 and 101:2008. As also outlined in the report on the “EURACHEM/CITAC Workshop on recent developments in measurement uncertainty” (this issue of Accred. Qual. Assur., doi:10.1007/s00769-012-0886-2), the JCGM Working Group 1 in charge of GUM has started the process of revising the Guide with drafting a “motivation and scope document” (http://www.metrologyinfo.org/Documents/GUM_Revision_Motivation_and_Scope.pdf released in January 2012). It is considered as basis of a survey aiming to solicit comments and opinions of the GUM users. This in turn will help the JCGM to better serve the needs of the measurement community.

VIM looks back on quite a history with a first edition published in 1983 and a second edition in 1993. The third edition—commonly known as “VIM3”—was released in 2007/2008, with a Corrigendum in May 2010 identifying some editorial and typographical misprints (no scientific changes). Since February 2012 when downloading VIM from http://www.bipm.org/vim, one obtains the corrected version of VIM3 (see also “The 2012 International Vocabulary of Metrology” in this issue of Accred. Qual. Assur., doi:10.1007/s00769-012-0885-3). VIM3 conveyed changes in some quite fundamental aspects, and in spite of its comparatively short period of existence, it was deemed desirable to undertake a survey on its usability in order to gather new input from all (potential) users. The JCGM Working Group 2, that is, the authors of VIM3, have prepared a set of questions; however, the participant of the survey can add own questions and comments.

The website http://www.metrologyinfo.org offering access to both the surveys is the Web Portal of the BIPM-OILM Resource Center jointly operated by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) and the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML). This website also provides information about metrology, why it is needed and how everyone benefits from accurate measurements.

(source: http://www.metrologyinfo.org)