The Negotiate Submission Agreement Section of the Ingest Guide describes the actions needed for an Archive and a Producer to generate a Submission Agreement. These agreements define the nature and scope of the records to transfer to the Preservation System and how the Archive will execute transfer, validation, and transformation of these records. All of the work in Section A is undertaken for the production of a Submission Agreement. Actual transfer, validation, and transformation work only occurs in Section B of the Ingest Guide.

This section is composed of eleven parts. During first three parts, Establish Relationships, Define Project, and Collect Information and Assess Value of Records, the Archive conducts an intellectual appraisal of the records under consideration and determines if it should accession them into the Preservation System. During these three parts, the Archive also gathers a variety of information about the records it should accession. This information includes the creator, record type, format, date, and extent of the records and any identifiers associated with them. During the next seven parts, Assess Record Types, Assess Formats, Assess Identifier Rules, Assess Copyright, Assess Access Rights, Assess Recordkeeping System, and Assess Feasibility, the Archive determines if its existing resources for preservation formats, record types, identifier rules, creator records, security procedures, transfer procedures, and system capabilities—referred to as Resources and described in the Components, Resources, Products, and Documentation section of this guide—meets the needs of the records identified in Part A3. The resulting feasibility report should present a gap analysis if the Resources do not reflect the continuing value of any records assessed in A3. The Archive must then determine if it should modify or add to its Resources to meet those assessments or if it should reject or modify the scope of the records involved in the Ingest Project. In Part A11, Finalize Submission Agreement, the Archive and the Producer finalize and agree to a Submission Agreement that is based on the scope of the records defined in Parts A1 through A3 and the decisions made in Parts A4 through A10.

For more information on Submission Agreements, see the Submission Agreement section of this Guide.