Standards are official publications used in industry and trade to describe specifications and procedures. Standards provide rules and recommendations for: quality, safety, performance and construction, codes of practice, methods of testing, symbols and terminology.
Many organisations issue standards, including trade associations and government departments.
standards are identifiable by a unique document code which usually includes a prefix (the prefix often identifies the country and publisher), and a number of publication year (e.g. AS 1816.1-2007).
Standards are "living" documents - up to 15% of them change every year. This is why standards might have current, draft and withdrawn versions.