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What will happen when the advanced level is revised? Will users have to update their search profiles every three months?
WIPO will publish all IPC changes three months in advance, giving searchers enough time to prepare. The number of changes per three-month interval is expected to be limited to one or a few technical fields each time. The committee in charge of IPC revision will ensure that, in any given field, changes do not occur too frequently.
Following a revision of the classification scheme, all documents (including the backlog) will be reclassified. This means that search strategies aiming at retrieving a complete set of documents will be much simpler, because it will no longer be necessary to search older material using the classification symbols of earlier IPC editions.
For some types of search, using the core level instead of the advanced level may well be enough. Search strategies based on the core level will not have to be adapted very often, because the core level will only change every three years, and even then, changes will be made only where needed in order to accommodate new technology.