IMPROVING THE AVAILABILITY OF ISSN – A

Joint Project Presented by

Gaëlle Béquet, International ISSN Centre/CIEPS and Laurie Kaplan, ProQuest

November 6, 2015

How the project came to be

The pilot project with the Netherlands ISSN Centre

Refinements to the process and lessons learned

Benefits to the community

Ongoing work and future plans

Questions and answers

Agenda

How the project came to be - TimelineQ3

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Both ISSN Register and Ulrich’s rely on complete and trustworthy bibliographic metadata: sharing information between the two databases was possible

There is an ongoing cooperation between ISSN US and ProQuest which was awarded ALA ALCTS Outstanding Collaboration Citation in February 2015: we could consider reinforcing the partnership

ProQuest receives direct information from publishers that ISSN network may miss

ISSN IC wants the Register to be as complete as possible as far as scholarly publications are concerned

Impetus for both organizations

Project participantsGaëlle BéquetSimona RizzaNathalie CornicPierre Godefroy

Laurie KaplanEwa KowalskaYvette Diven

Adriaan LemmenSaskia van Renswoude Jessica Endert

After the 2014 Charleston Conference the Ulrich’s team conducted research using the Ulrich’s database◦ Ran reports on active titles, print or online, without ISSN

distribution by content type (academic/scholarly, trade, etc.) distribution by serial type (journal, magazine, newsletter, etc.) distribution by country (selected target countries)

◦Worked with our Product Management team to enumerate the benefits to the Ulrich’s products and our clients to determine which metadata elements to include with each record

◦ Talked with our management and legal team about a possible cooperative arrangement and a pilot project

Ulrich’s team discusses the issue

Stats by Content type

Stats by Serial type

Stats by Country

Internal ProQuest discussions

Field names from Ulrich’s Database and Corresponding Marc fields◦ Title (including subtitle if applicable) (fields 222, 245 & 246)◦ Language (field 008 & 041)◦ Country (field 044)◦ Date of publication (if already published) (field 008)◦ Status (Active or Announced for publication) (field 008)◦ Media Type (e.g. print or online) (field 007)◦ Link to other medium (field 776) (PQ Related Serials)◦ Serial Type (e.g. journal, bulletin, etc.) (field 008)◦ Title history (fields 780 & 785)◦ Frequency (field 008)◦ Publisher (field 260)◦ Publisher address and/or email address (field 260)◦ Publisher city/country (field 260)◦ Corporate author (fields 710/720)◦ Open Access Indicator (field 856)◦ Journal Website (field 856)

Metadata elements shared

Once the pilot project agreement was completed the representatives from ProQuest and from the ISSN IC met via phone to set expectations and finalize logistics

Data was collected and the first 200 active (or forthcoming) titles, print or online, from the Netherlands without ISSN were sent to the IC in an Excel spreadsheet

The initial set contained only titles from Ulrich’s that were Academic/Scholarly and were mostly monographic series, about 15 journals, and a few bulletins, proceedings, and reports

The pilot project with the Netherlands ISSN Centre

Sample from Ulrichsweb™ Active academic/scholarly print and online records

from the Netherlands without ISSN

Pilot project and ongoing cooperation between the International ISSN Centre based in Paris and ProQuest began in February 2015

Purpose◦ Identify active titles without ISSN using Ulrich’s Periodicals Database as the

initial resource◦ Assign ISSN to those records where appropriate

Under the supervision of the International Centre, national ISSN Centers determine whether the ISSN is simply missing, or has never been assigned

Desired outcome of the project ◦ To benefit to librarians, publishers, and vendors◦ More titles will have ISSN registered with national centres and in the ISSN

Register◦ Ulrich’s Periodical Database will have more records with ISSN◦ Electronic loading and matching of titles based on ISSN will be improved

Pilot overview

220 titles with missing ISSN were processed first by the ISSN IC comparing them with the ISSN Register

182 titles were thus forwarded to ISSN Netherlands for further investigation; they were mostly monographic series

ProQuest and the IC met to discuss questions coming from the Netherlands ISSN Center

Progress during the pilot

Terminology was clarified, especially around title history, former titles, and related serials

Part of the first batch was returned by ISSN Netherlands and further analysis was done by the Ulrich’s team◦ 97 ISSN returned in the file were added to Ulrich’s database◦ This led to more clarifications and additional records being

pulled from Ulrich’s that were not Academic/Scholarly – about another 80 records that were Trade or Consumer titles

Progress during the pilot (cont.)

ProQuest prepared a second set of 74 titles using the following criteria: ◦ Country of Publication: Netherlands◦ Status of publication: Active◦ Media/format type: Print, Online◦ Serial Content type: Trade (instead of Academic/Scholarly) ◦ ISSN: missing

The level of overlapping with the ISSN Register was still low Lesson learned: If ISSN is missing in Ulrich’s title record it is most

likely that it has not been assigned because Ulrich’s editors always check ISSN Portal when creating a new title record

It proves the opportunity of our partnership to enhance the quality of both databases!

Extension of the pilot

Refinements to the process: monographic series

Refinements to the process: monographic series

Refinements to the process: monographic series and proceedings

Telecommunications technology & application series / Kluwer Academic Publishers : ISSN 2452-3577 assigned

Proceedings of the second European conference on computer-supported cooperative work (ECSCW ‘91) / Kluwer Academic Publishers : ISSN 2452-3565 assigned

Refinements to the process: journals

Refinements to the process: journalsYou searched ISSN database - ISSN 15602133

ISSN 1560-2133

ISSN-L 1560-2133

Medium Regular print

Key Title Asian journal of ophthalmology (Print)

First or current publisher Hong Kong: Scientific Communications

Current or last publisher Amsterdam : Kugler Publications

Country of publication NETHERLANDS

Dates of publication 1998 / 9999 current

Frequency Annual

Type of publication Periodical

Language English

Title script Basic roman

Title proper Asian journal of ophthalmology.

Abbreviated key title Asian J. ophthalmol. (Print)

Universal Decimal Classification 617.7 15th Dutch ed.

Other Edition Entry Yazhou yanke zazhi [ISSN 1991-2102]

Additional Physical Form Entry Asian journal of ophthalmology (Online) [ISSN 2452-0691]

ISSN Centre Netherland

Refinements to the process: journalsYou searched ISSN database - ISSN 24520691

ISSN 2452-0691 ISSN-L 1560-2133

Medium Computer remote Key Title Asian journal of ophthalmology (Online)

First or current publisher Amsterdam : Kugler Publications

Country of publication NETHERLANDS

Dates of publication 2011 / 9999 current

Frequency Annual Type of

publication Periodical

Language English Title script Basic roman

Title proper Asian journal of ophthalmology. Universal Decimal

Classification 617.7 15th Dutch ed.

URL http://www.asjoo.com/index.php/AsianJO Additional

Physical Form Entry

Asian journal of ophthalmology (Print) [ISSN 1560-2133]

ISSN Centre Netherland

One lesson that was learned was that it takes a considerable amount of time to research a title◦ Research in the ISSN Register◦ Research on the publisher site◦ Research on the open web

Scarcity of resources created difficulties at the Netherlands ISSN Center regarding deadlines

Daily work suffers when staff focus on the project◦ Discussions in the last month or two have included the

possibility of hiring an intern to help with the daily Netherlands ISSN work

Lessons learned

ProQuest has experience with this type of set-up with their employee in the Library of Congress

The process to hire an intern is complicated by geographic distance

ProQuest’s UK office is helping to set up the parameters of the internship◦ They will verify if there are any different laws in the Netherlands

leading to changes from the UK internship◦ ProQuest has an office in the Netherlands enabling a PQ staff person

to be a resource for the intern and to discuss the plan for the work◦ The intern will be jointly managed by the Netherlands ISSN Center

and the ProQuest Ulrich’s team

Hiring an intern

Publishers who wish to identify their serial publications and incorporate a barcode on the magazine, journal or newspaper for sale via the major retailers

Libraries which use the ISSN as a fundamental identifier for distinguishing between identical serial titles and facilitating checking and ordering procedures, collection management, legal deposit, interlibrary loans etc.

Catalogue databases which use the ISSN as a record control number and can make use of the records on the ISSN register

Documentation centres and databases which handle bibliographic references and use the ISSN for more accurate serials citation, abstracting and indexing services etc.

Subscription agencies who act as intermediaries between publishers and their customers use the ISSN to ensure the correct serial publication is ordered

Academics who wish to cite in full details of publications for research purposes Retailers / wholesalers who use ISSN based barcodes within their own internal

systems in order to assess and control magazine/newspaper circulationCourtesy of British Library (http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/issn.html)

Benefits to the community

Annual ISSN Directors’ meeting took place Oct. 13-16, 2015◦ Presentation about the partnership with ProQuest to 50 ISSN

directors◦ ISSN Netherlands ready to carry on working with remaining

727 titles provided that ISSN team can receive help (workload estimate: 1 FTE / 9 weeks)

◦ Directors informed about plan to expand geographic coverage

The ongoing work and future plans

Identified countries for the next steps◦ As we move forward beyond the pilot and into the ongoing

project, we will continue with countries in Europe ◦ Possible additional countries will be:

Germany Denmark Ireland Sweden United Kingdom

◦ The choice of countries will be based on the results of statistics pulled from the Ulrich’s database and the bandwidth of the various ISSN Centers, as well as whether ProQuest has a presence in that country in case an intern is needed

Ongoing work and future plans (cont.)

Need to encourage publishers and providers to use assigned ISSN◦ Include on print publications and online on website

Follow the NISO PIE-J Recommended Practice ◦ Include in files delivered to libraries, aggregators, discovery

systems, archives, and so on◦ Provide better access and linking throughout the community

One more important step

Contact information:

Gaëlle Béquet - gaelle.bequet@issn.org

Laurie Kaplan – laurie.kaplan@proquest.com

Thank you!

Questions?