ISSN International Centre and ProQuest Work Together to Improve Electronic Loading of Serial Titles Worldwide

New project combines efforts to identify and assign missing ISSNs

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Feb 11, 2016, 10:10 ET

ANN ARBOR, Mich. and PARIS, Feb. 11, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ProQuest and the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), International Centre are joining forces to improve the electronic loading and matching of serial titles for any product or system. The organizations are pinpointing active serial titles without an ISSN and assigning an appropriate identifier. Under the supervision of the International Centre, national ISSN Centers determine whether the ISSN is simply missing, or has never been assigned.

The outcome of the project will be a huge benefit to librarians, publishers, and vendors as more serial titles will have ISSNs registered in the ISSN International Register compiled by the ISSN network and in the Ulrich's Periodicals Directory® and Ulrichsweb™ references.

Representatives of the ISSN International Centre based in Paris and ProQuest's content team in New Providence, New Jersey first discussed the idea in November of 2014. A pilot project was started in February of 2015, using the Ulrich's Periodicals Directory reference as the initial resource to find active serial records from the Netherlands without an ISSN. Over the last few months, the Ulrich's team, the ISSN International Centre, and the Netherlands ISSN Center have been discussing the findings and improving the process.

Laurie Kaplan, Content Business Analyst Lead at ProQuest said, "During the project, the Ulrich's team identifies active records from specified countries that do not have an ISSN entered in the Ulrich's Periodicals Directory database. The appropriate ISSN Center then determines whether these records correspond to publications already identified with an ISSN in the ISSN Register and if so, informs ProQuest and communicates the corresponding ISSN and ISSN-L. If an ISSN does not exist for the particular publication, the ISSN Center assigns an ISSN to the resource and includes the record in the local and ISSN International Centre Register. The updated serial records will be returned to ProQuest for inclusion in Ulrich's Periodicals Directory and Ulrichsweb."

Gaëlle Béquet, Director ISSN International Centre / CIEPS noted, "Libraries worldwide will benefit from this cooperation between ProQuest and the ISSN IC as it will result in more complete data being available for active periodicals published around the world. Both parties acknowledge that assigning ISSN is only the first step in furthering the value of ISSN in the publishing world. Newly assigned ISSN must be incorporated into publisher files and included on publishers' websites for the ISSN to become part of the process of transferring and updating titles for librarians. ProQuest and ISSN IC will work together to encourage the use of the newly assigned ISSN by the appropriate publishers and providers of serials content."

About The ISSN International Centre for the registration of serial publications – CIEPS (www.issn.org):

The purpose of the CIEPS – or ISSN International Centre, an intergovernmental organisation – is to manage at the international level the identification and the description of serial publications and ongoing resources, print and online, in all disciplines. The ISSN International Centre was officially created in Paris in 1975, under the terms of an agreement signed between UNESCO and France, the host country of the ISSN International Centre. In 2016 there are 89 member countries whose activities are coordinated by the ISSN International Centre. The latter is responsible for maintaining and publishing the ISSN International Register and for assigning ISSN to international publications, and publications issued in countries that do not have an ISSN National Centre.

About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)

ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company's products are a gateway to the world's knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections, and ebooks. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create, and manage information.

The company's cloud-based technologies offer flexible solutions for librarians, students, and researchers through the ProQuest^®, Bowker^®, Coutts^® information services, Dialog^®, Ex Libris^®, ebrary^®, EBL™, and SIPX^® businesses – and notable research tools such as the Summon^® discovery service, the RefWorks^® citation and document management platform, MyiLibrary^® ebook platform, the Pivot^® research development tool, and the Intota™ library services platform. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.