Springer Nature and the ISSN International Centre have been initiating a centralized process for the assignment of International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSN) to serial publications of Springer Nature. The new process standardizes and automates the way unique identifiers are requested, before their publication, for periodicals and book series published under the various imprints of Springer Nature. Springer Nature thus has only one point of contact for all new ISSN assignments. Springer Nature will get ISSNs more quickly, and the ISSN International Centre will immediately share the new data with ISSN National Centres via the ISSN Register.

Set online in 2002, Latindex Catalogo was created as a referral service specializing in editorial quality criteria applied to the evaluation of Spanish journals in Science and Technology. Those journals that are compliant with a minimum of the criteria established by Latindex are included in the catalog. Editorial features like content, editorial guidelines, and online presentation are checked. Since May 2017, online journals must have their own e-ISSN, additionally to their previously assigned print ISSN. This mandatory amendment was added to the new list of 38 editorial quality criteria decided by a group of 4 scholars members of the Latindex network, and approved during the last Latindex technical meeting held in September 2016.

PRESS_OO is a formal ontology designed to represent the bibliographic information about continuing resources, and more specifically about serials (journals, newspapers, magazines, etc.). It is an extension of the FRBR_OO model (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records – Object Oriented). FRBR_OO is in turn is an extension of CIDOC CRM, the conceptual reference model for cultural heritage information. It has been developed by a working group made up of representatives of the ISSN International Centre, the ISSN Review Group and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), and is currently maintained by a dedicated Review Group under the auspices of IFLA Cataloguing section. PRESSoo version 1.0 underwent a world-wide review in 2015. The responses were studied and changes were made to the model in light of these responses. The current version of PRESSoo is version 1.3.

The annual plenary meeting of ISO Technical Committee 46 Information-Documentation was held in Pretoria (South Africa) from 22 to 26 May 2017 at the kind invitation of the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS). The revision of ISO 15836 (Dublin Core), the publication of the revised ISO 5127 (Information and documentation – Vocabulary), the preservation of digital records were among the main topics to be addressed during this meeting.

The ISSN International Centre participated in the 19th Fiesole Collection Development Retreat about the future of libraries, publishing, collections, and scholarship from the 19 to 21st of April 2017. This year’s theme was The Evolving Scholarly Environment. The 2017 Fiesole Retreat examined new technologies and business models, as well as the re-emerging role of collection development and librarianship in the continuing digital evolution of the scholarly ecosystem.

The presentations are now available online.

Data exchange between the Norwegian ISSN national centre at the National Library in Oslo and the ISSN International Centre in Paris is now based (since March 2017) on the OAI-PMH protocol. In this new framework, ISSN cataloguers in Norway directly produce ISSN records in the cataloguing environment of their institution; these records are automatically exposed through a dedicated “ISSN set” in MarcXML (Marc 21) through the library OAI-PMH server. This “ISSN set” is regularly harvested by the ISSN International Centre in order to feed directly the ISSN Register with the output.

This new workflow is similar to the one already set up last year at the German ISSN Centre at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB) in Frankfurt and paves the way for more streamlined contributions to the ISSN Register from other countries of the ISSN network.

The ISSN International Centre participated in the Annual Conference organized by the French Bibliographic Agency for Higher Education (ABES) in Montpellier (France) from 10 to 11th May 2017. ABES is the French public agency which creates and manages information systems and services for the French academic and research community. The presentations and videos of the plenary meetings are now available online.

On May 12^th, the ISSN International Centre was represented at the Annual Meeting for managers of French regional centres specialized in serial identification (Centres SUDOC-PS). The current activities of the ISSN network were presented.

IFLA Library Reference Model (LRM) dated March 2017 is now available. This version has been reviewed after a world-wide review. It is awaiting endorsement by IFLA Professional Committee.

The Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) Recommended Practice aims to solve problems in the information supply chain by improving the exchange of metadata from content providers to knowledge bases. The KBART Standing Committee has been working to increase adoption of the recommended practice and add more content providers to its list of endorsers.

The content provider community is invited to participate in a survey regarding the use of KBART, ease of adoption, and opportunities for training and outreach. The survey will be available until June 15.

Stella Griffiths, Executive Director of the International ISBN Agency, looks at the reasons for the longevity of ISBN as it approaches 50 years. The article also outlines the work towards the revision of the ISBN Standard and the challenges that ISBN currently faces.

Since the initial launch of Handle.net, we have seen a proliferation of persistent identifiers (PID) addressing many use cases. Some PID systems have become established parts of the science information infrastructure. In other areas we see work in progress, and new use cases being proposed. This special collection of papers discusses the architecture of PID systems, their adoption and application, and new use cases.

Trevor Lane and Helena Wang, COPE Council members, report on the COPE China Seminar held in March 2017, in conjunction with the 2017 ISMTE Asian-Pacific Conference.

If the world’s published research were a building in progress, then its structural integrity would balance on the three ethical pillars of research publishing—honest authorship, sound peer review, and prevention of plagiarism. These were the three themes of the first COPE China Seminar. The presentations are on the COPE website.

Springer Nature is giving a boost to researchers with the launch of its new Springer Nature SciGraph. The new Linked Open Data (LOD) platform aggregates data sources from Springer Nature and cooperating partners, making it easier to analyze information related to Springer Nature publications.

The self-publishing explosion and availability of self-publishing tools and services geared to libraries have heralded new opportunities for libraries, especially public libraries, to engage their communities in new ways. By supporting self-publishing initiatives in their communities, public libraries can promote standards of quality in self-publishing, provide unique opportunities to engage underserved populations, and become true archives of their communities.

The Scholarly Communication Librarian Core Competencies Task Force has completed a board-reviewed draft of core competencies. The Task Force intends to present its findings at the Members Forum on June 10th during the upcoming annual conference. All NASIG Conference attendees are welcome to offer comments. Through extensive investigation into recent position descriptions and continuing education opportunities, the task force identified four themes common to all scholarly communication librarians.

The Library of Congress is making 25 million records in its online catalog available for free bulk download at loc.gov/cds/products/marcDist.php. All those records use the MARC format, known to be a reliable international standard, and cover more than 45 years, ranging from 1968, during the early years of MARC, to 2014.

 

On May 8, 2017, several regional and national repository networks and stakeholder groups, including the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), formally endorsed an international accord that will lead to the greater alignment of repository networks around the world. The accord was developed by COAR, the Confederation of Open Access Repositories, and aims to support open access and open science. It will foster closer relationships between the regional networks and act as a framework for undertaking specific activities and implementation of common functionalities.

OCLC and the Wikimedia Foundation’s Wikipedia Library are working together to make it easy for editors to link citations in Wikipedia to millions of library materials represented in WorldCat, the world’s largest database of information about library collections.

Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress (USA), member of IFLA Serials and Other Continuing Resources Section), reports on the CONSER Open Access Journal Project. This project cooperatively targets the DOAJ to assure that CONSER records are available for all journals in the DOAJ. It is designed to provide on-going coverage of new titles added to DOAJ. These CONSER records are in turn used by electronic resource management and access systems to track e-journal collections such as DOAJ and other e-journal collections. Ensuring accurate ISSN data is distributed for more consistent accessibility, and providing a consistent set of titles and metadata across different user information environments are among the benefits of this initiative.

Held as an Associated Event with the Research Data Alliance (RDA) 9th Plenary meeting, ICSTI 2017 Annual Members’ Meeting & Workshops took place on 4 April 2017. The programs of the Information Trends and Opportunities Committee (ITOC) and the Technical Activities Coordinating Committee (TACC) of ICSTI were respectively chaired by Margret Plank (TIB) and Carly Robinson (DOE/OSTI). The presentations given at ITOC and TACC workshops are available online.

 

Knowledge Unlatched is a consortium of libraries and publishers working together to grant open access to scholarly books and journals in the humanities and social sciences. Founded by Frances Pinter in 2012, the initiative has unlatched nearly 500 titles to date and is presently launching its fourth round – KU Select 2017 – with 350 monographs, including both frontlist and backlist titles, and more than 20 journals.

KU team is currently reviewing submitted titles and plans to start the pledging in May 2017. Libraries are now invited to view the collection and pledge for titles at: app.knowledgeunlatched.org. Interested librarians and stakeholders can find answers on the KU Select 2017 central information page.

Further to an article on the LSE Impact Blog proposing a European Open Access Platform for research, a discussion is open on how OpenAIRE can contribute further to create a participatory, federated OA platform. A public platform for the dissemination of research will become essential infrastructure to finally fully integrate research publishing and dissemination into the research lifecycle, rather than seeing it as an added-extra to be outsourced.

In 2015 and 2016, Knowledge Exchange hosted two workshops on monitoring of open access publications. These workshops were designed to create some tangible recommendations on monitoring Open Access publications and cost data related to publications. The workshop led to 48 concrete recommendations, in which thematics of standards and data are often evocated. Those recommendations have been published in a workshop report.

Theme : Embedding Libraries – Service and Development in Context

Full program

Theme : Libraries Powering Sustainable Knowledge in the Digital Age

Full program