Since 5th January 2018, the ISSN International Centre has been offering a new ISSN portal interface and a new ISSN Extranet for publishers.

The ISSN Portal interface (https://portal.issn.org) combines free data and subscription-based access to enhanced ISSN data. New features have been added. A cartographic search is now available from the landing page, enabling to search by place of publication. Subscribing users can submit a list of ISSNs in order to check the ISSN status and get the corresponding records. Faceted refinements are possible as well as a search by subjects. The new portal also provides linked and enriched information to its customers.

The ISSN Extranet provides publishers with enhanced services meant to facilitate ISSN requests and track the assignment process at every stage. Moreover, publishers can claim ownership for publications.

ISSN assignment is now a chargeable service. An ISSN request shall cost between 25€ and 50€ as per the country where the publisher is located. Service packages are also available on request. For further information, please contact communication[at]issn.org.

The National Diet Library launched on 5 january 2018 the Online Search and Request Service (NDL Online) and a new bibliographic records service (NDL-Bib).

NDL Online is a new service replacing the NDL-OPAC. Among the major services and functionalities of the NDL Online, a new English-language interface is available and allows patrons to make requests and search NDL holdings and the Japanese Periodicals Index. In addition, a new National Diet Library Bibliographic Records Service (NDL-Bib) was launched  to enable patrons to download bibliographic information created by the National Diet Library.

Over 2017, a group of collaborating organizations, united in the commitment to digital preservation, came together to explore how they can better communicate with the wider community. As an initial effort, the group drafted a Digital Preservation Declaration of Shared Values that is now being released for community comment until 1st March 2018.

Looking at the two most complete researcher workflow portfolios, those owned by Digital Science and Elsevier, one of the glaring differences has been Digital Science’s lack of a citation database to compete with Elsevier’s Scopus. Digital Science announced Dimensions, a new product that includes a citation database, a research analytics suite, and streamlined article discovery and access. Roger C. Schonfeld, Director of Ithaka S+R’s Library and Scholarly Communication program, highlights the major features and differences compared to digital Science’s main competitors. He concludes that innovation and competition in this market is ultimately good for scientists themselves, their universities, and science itself.

The European Commission will fund an Open Research Publishing Platform whose aim is to offer Horizon 2020 beneficiaries a free and fast publication possibility for peer reviewed articles as well as pre-prints resulting from Horizon 2020 funding. The platform will complement the current policy in Horizon 2020 in order to balance obligations with incentives. The platform will explore many features like open peer review, next generation metrics, and access to preprints.

The attached note contains more information about this action which is foreseen to be launched in early 2018 through a public procurement process.

The Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) aims to allow free access to scholarly citation data and to build analytical services on those raw data. The initiative was launched in April 2017 and resulted in the creation of a repository called the Open Citations Corpus (OCC). David Shotton, co-Director of OCC and co-founder of I4OC, explains the milestones of the project, the results achieved so far and the barriers. He argues that publishers should ensure that all citations are included in reference lists, and should make this bibliometric data openly available in a searchable format. He calls on all stakeholders to campaign for this initiative.

The Criteria, policy and procedures for the admission and permanence of journals in the SciELO Brazil Collection were updated and become valid from January 2018. The new version contemplates advances in editorial policies related to the alignment of the SciELO Program with good practices of open science research communication. The perspective is to reinforce the contribution of SciELO journals in the social and scientific qualification of Brazilian research. The criteria aim to increase transparency, completeness, celerity and interoperability of research communication.

Topic: Publishing 2020: Ramping up Relevance

The program is online.

The program is online.

The National Federation of Advanced Information Services will celebrate its 60th anniversary.

Topic: Information Transformation: Open. Global. Collaborative.

The program is online.

Topic: Connecting the Knowledge Commons: From Projects to Sustainable Infrastructure

The deadline for submission of extended abstracts is being extended to 31 January 2018.