Librarians, publishers, content vendors, subscription agents and others need to exchange data on a daily basis. And anything that can make this process more successful by improving the ability to match updates to existing records is of great interest to these parties. So it is not surprising that at the Charleston Conference in early November 2015 a session advertised as “Improving the Availability of ISSN – A Joint Project” had good attendance. The session led by Gaëlle Béquet of the International ISSN Centre/CIEPS and Laurie Kaplan of ProQuest, discussed a joint project between the two organizations.

1. Presented by
Gaëlle Béquet, International ISSN Centre/CIEPS
and Laurie Kaplan, ProQuest
November 6, 2015

2.  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

4.  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

5. Gaëlle Béquet
Simona Rizza
Nathalie Cornic
Pierre Godefroy
Laurie Kaplan
Ewa Kowalska
Yvette Diven
Adriaan Lemmen
Saskia van Renswoude
Jessica Endert

6.  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

11.  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)

12.  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

13.  Active academic/scholarly print and online records
from the Netherlands without ISSN

14.  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

15.  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

16.  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

17.  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!

20.  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

22. You 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

23. You 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

24.  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

25.  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

26.  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 circulation
Courtesy of British Library (http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/issn.html)

27.  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

28.  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

29.  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

30. Contact information:
Gaëlle Béquet - gaelle.bequet@issn.org
Laurie Kaplan – laurie.kaplan@proquest.com
Thank you!