ISSN International Centre and EDINA at the University of Edinburgh, have agreed to collaborate to postpone the retirement of Keepers Registry.  Keepers Registry has been a Jisc funded service for the UK Higher Education sector from 2016 to 2019, but this funding will cease in July 2019.  Jisc are thanked for their funding of the service over many years.

The ISSN International Centre and its Governing Board value the Keepers Registry as part of the global identification infrastructure for serials and wish to continue to make its functionality and content available for the UK and international communities of libraries, publishers and scholars. To maintain this valuable service, ISSN International Centre aims to provide a new service from December 2019.  To facilitate this development, funding for EDINA to run the current service until the end of November 2019 is to be provided by the ISSN International Centre and the Keepers Agencies.

Pierre Godefroy, Head of Information Systems Department, and Nathalie Cornic, Head of the Metadata and Technical Coordination of the ISSN Network Department, will attend the 2nd International ISNI Summit for Libraries. Organized by the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the British Library under the auspices of CENL (Conference of European National Librarians), this summit will take place on 26-27 June 2019 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. The aim of this meeting is to bring together ISNI adopters/users in the library sector worldwide to share their experiences in implementing ISNI.  It also aims to introduce diverse use cases and explore ways in which libraries can build stronger collaborations in order to coordinate the library sector representation in the future development and governance of ISNI.

Regina Romano Reynolds, Director of the U.S. ISSN Center and Head of the ISSN Section at the Library of Congress, gave a presentation at NASIG Annual Conference on 6 June 2019. During the session entitled Minding Your Ps and Qs: Predatory Journals, Piracy, and Quality Questions, Reynolds recounted the experiences of ISSN staff on the front lines of dealing with the full range of new publishers. She also explored the broader questions raised by the predatory publishing phenomenon. Her presentation is available online.  

Since January 2018, the ISSN International Centre has continuously been improving the ergonomy, the layout and the design of the ISSN Portal, that offers enriched and linked information to its subscribers. A logo for the ISSN Portal has been created and is now displayed on the banner of the ISSN Portal home page (https://portal.issn.org).

From 21 to 24 June 2019, NISO will participate in 4 sessions at ALA 2019, the American Library Association Annual Conference. Notably, the NISO Annual Members Meeting & Standards Update to be held on 22 June 2019 will provide updates on projects newly underway or recently completed: Open Discovery Initiative, Transfer, KBART Automation, RA21 and Content Platform Migrations.

Laurie Kaplan, Sr. Manager at ProQuest, and Regina Romano Reynolds, Director of the U.S. ISSN Center and Head of the ISSN Section at the Library of Congress, are active on both the PIE-J committee and the ISO 8 revision working group. Through this presentation, they highlight the most salient points of the newly re-born standard ISO 8:2019:  Presentation and Identification of Periodicals. The “crossing” of the ISO 8 Standard and the NISO PIE-J RP enhances the guidance of PIE-J by presenting similar information in a standard, for the benefit of all stakeholders of the periodical supply chain. There is a strong emphasis on the importance of the ISSN as an identifier of periodicals, with reference to ISO-3297, Information and documentation — International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), currently under revision. It also makes specific recommendations for presentation and identification aspects of retrospective digitization of periodicals.

On 10 June 2019, NISO organised an Open Teleconference about the Transfer Code of Practice, updated in April 2019. Transfer originated with the United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG) and moved to the auspices of NISO in 2014. Since September 10th, 2018, the Transfer alerting service has been hosted by the ISSN International Centre: https://journaltransfer.issn.org

The  conversation was held with Transfer Standing Committee co-chair James Phillpotts of Oxford University Press and Standing Committee member Linda Wobbe of SCELC. The recording of this event can be downloaded.

At 2019 CILIP Conference (Manchester, 3-4 July 2019), Tim Devenport, Executive Director of the ISNI International Agency, and Andrew MacEwan, Head of Content and Metadata Processing at the British Library, will give a presentation about ISNIs in Publishing, Cataloguing and the Library Supply Chain. They will describe how the ISNI is linking library authority files with publisher supply chain metadata across multiple content industries. A case study will show how the use of ISNIs in the British Library’s metadata opens up new opportunities for collaboration with the book publishing industry.

The full CILIP Conference programme is online.

Using Wikidata as a hub for institutional identifiers is one of the many potential uses of Wikidata for libraries. Many organizations maintain unique identifiers for people, subjects, works, etc. If these IDs are all added to Wikidata then the user could seamlessly access data from dozens of sources through the Wikidata ID.

The Library of Congress (LoC) maintains many authority files that are widely used. The Network Development and MARC Standard Office maintains the Linked Open Data version of the Name Authority File (NAF) and Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) at the site id.loc.gov. With id.loc.gov, the LoC maintains links to many other institutions authority files including the French and German national libraries, other government services (Department of Agriculture) and other cultural institutions like the Getty Museum. Wikidata ids have been included in the id.loc.gov system.

For the first time in 16 years, the Library of Congress is rolling out an all-new CIP (Cataloging in Publication) database. PrePub Book Link (PPBL) overhauls the outdated 2003 system. It took more than one and a half years, involves more than 3,000 major scholarly and trade publishers and more than 50,000 books each year. “It’s a very significant milestone,” says Karl Debus-López, chief of the U.S. Programs, Law, and Literature Division and former Chair of the ISSN International Centre Governing Board, which oversees the program. “It’s a success story of collaborative work.” The new system is faster, allows publishers to log-in by multiple accounts and attach a PDF file for the book, and provides auto-filled data boxes to streamline the process.

Despite growing awareness of predatory publishing and research on its market characteristics, the defining attributes of fraudulent journals remain controversial. This study aims to develop a better understanding of quality criteria for scholarly journals by analysing journals and publishers indexed in blacklists of predatory journals and whitelists of legitimate journals and the lists’ inclusion criteria. As a result, there is an overlap between journals and publishers included in blacklists and whitelists. Blacklists and whitelists differ in their criteria for quality and the weight given to different dimensions of quality.

A new model for developing a university press has been designed to be applicable to a range of business models, including subscription, open access and hybrid. The guiding principles, publishing stages and strategic points all constitute the building blocks necessary to implement and maintain a sustainable university press. The model highlights the overall importance of working in partnership and building relationships as key to developing and maintaining a successful press.

The Transpose database, which launched on 13 June 2019, assembles thousands of science journals’ editorial policies to boost transparency and accessibility. The database was compiled by a mostly US-based group of researchers working towards reforming publishing. The database includes details about peer review, preprints and editorial policies that are often difficult or impossible to find on journal websites.

Cost is the No. 1 reason why colleges end their “big deals” with publishers, but not everyone thinks the agreements are really that expensive. Kent Anderson, CEO of publishing and data analytics company RedLink, has argued that the subscription model is actually “pretty efficient” for institutions. According to Roger Schonfeld, director of the libraries, scholarly communication and museums program at Ithaka S+R, the rise in open-access publishing has decreased the value of subscription deals as more content is available for free. To conclude, he thinks that the big deal as a bundled subscription model is definitely under threat.

Since its launch in September 2018, Plan S has reinvigorated the global debate on Open Access to scholarly publications. The 600 plus inputs received allowed the coalition to make changes that take into consideration the views expressed by the diverse communities affected. Changes include an extension to the formal commencement point for Plan S which will now take effect from 1 January 2021. This new timetable provides more opportunity for researchers, institutions, publishers, and repositories to make changes and for funders’ policies to develop and take effect. The Plan S principles now also reflect a commitment made by the funders to revise methods of research assessment along the lines of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

Applications of publishers to OASPA have been rapidly increasing, in particular from publishers issuing single journals. Given the overlap in the screening criteria between DOAJ and OASPA, and that DOAJ is primarily an index of reputable open-access journals, OASPA has agreed with the DOAJ that, with immediate effect, all single journals that apply to OASPA will now be referred to the DOAJ if the journal is not already listed in DOAJ. Once approved by the DOAJ, applicants that still wish to be part of OASPA should get back in touch with the organisation.

Topic: Eye on the Horizon

Register now: Early bird rate ends 1 July 2019

The preliminary programme is online.

Couperin, French Consortium of Academic and Research Institutions for Access to Digital Publication,s is a non-profit association funded by membership fees and the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Couperin is organising a workshop entitled What developments for consortia in the age of open science?

The programme is online.

The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) is organising a webinar about microPublications on June 26th, 2019.

Chair: Heather Staines, Head of Partnerships, MIT Knowledge Futures Group

Topic: The time has come… to talk of many things!

Submission deadline: 12 July 2019

Registration is now open.

The ALCTS (Association for Library Collections & Technical Services) Standards Committee presents their compilation of standards-related programming at ALA Annual 2019, the American Library Association Annual Conference to be held in Washington D.C. from 20 to 25 June 2019.