For its 100th issue, the journal Arabesques, published by ABES (French Bibliographic Agency for Higher Education), looks in the rear-view mirror to tell how the original and rich landscape of French scientific and technical information has been built, and what place Abes occupies among its many partners, including the ISSN International Center.

This anniversary provides an ideal opportunity to acknowledge the long-standing cooperation between ABES and the ISSN International Center. Gaëlle Béquet, Director of the ISSN International Center, shows how the two organizations are complementary in their missions, as both institutions offer information services articulated on both bibliographic reference databases, the Sudoc and the ISSN Register.

(Article in French)

Bosniaca is the journal of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is published annually and includes original professional and scientific works in library science as well as systematized practices for the management of collections. On 5 February 2021, the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina celebrated the 25th anniversary of Bosniaca with the publication of its 25th issue (2020), which is available in English and indexed in DOAJ. Bosniaca is also indexed in Web of Science, EBSCO, ErihPlus, Slavic Humanities Index, Index Copernicus, ICI Journals Master List, ROAD – the Directory of Open Access scholarly Resources, C.E.E.O.L. (Central and Eastern European Online Library), Hrčak – the central portal of Croatian scientific journals, KoBSON – the Serbian Library Consortium for Coordinated Acquisition.

The ISSN IC, with the support of Thomas Francart (SPARNA Company), has initiated a data upload project in Wikidata to validate and enrich metadata associated with continuing resources. A data model was discussed with the Wikidata community and the dedicated ISSN Bot has been designed to perform regular updates and perform synchronization between the data in the ISSN Portal and the data present in Wikidata. This project has already completed 125,118 Wikidata items corresponding to journal titles by adding specific data, i.e. ISSNs for print and online editions, ISSN-L, key title, language, country of publication and URLs.

More information about ISSN Bot data model can be found here: https://cutt.ly/VkjpCka

The ISSN Review Group, represented officially by Regina Romano Reynolds, Director of ISSN USA, Library of Congress, with assistance from Deanna White, Project Officer at ISSN International Centre, presented two proposals to the MARC Advisory Committee (MAC) meeting, held on 26 January 2021. Ms Reynolds is the ISSN’s long-standing voting member of MAC and valued MARC expert.  The proposals can be read on the MAC website regarding the type of continuing resource: https://www.loc.gov/marc/mac/2021/2021-03.html  and regarding the subfields added to field 022 (ISSN):  https://www.loc.gov/marc/mac/2021/2021-04.html .

As a result, newly defined values for the type of continuing resources code will be useful for faceting and statistical reporting in the ISSN Portal; also, a URI subfield in the ISSN field (022) will serve as an authoritative work identifier for the serial in linked data.

The 5th conference held on 4 December 2020 organized by the “Systems and Data” group of the French program Bibliographic transition in France brought together nearly 500 participants on the theme “Cataloguing by entities or the big bang of data”.

The recordings of the presentations are online, to consult HERE ! A summary of the conference is provided in French.

The report “Transforming Metadata into Linked Data to Improve Digital Collection Discoverability: A CONTENTdm Pilot Project” shares the CONTENTdm Linked Data Pilot project findings, where OCLC and five partner institutions investigated methods for transforming metadata into linked data, to improve the discoverability and management of digitized cultural materials. This follows the first report published in 2020, Transitioning to the Next Generation of Metadata”, that shone a light on the evolution of the next generation of metadata.

In 2020, NISO welcomed 14 new endorsing publishers as the most recent adopters of its Transfer Code of Practice. The Code contains best practice guidelines for both the Transferring Publisher and the Receiving Publisher, to ensure that journal content remains easily accessible by librarians and readers. Publishers who endorse the Code can register for free with the ISSN Portal; when they acquire a title, they may record the transfer through the ISSN Portal. Information about transfers is shared with the library and publishing communities via the Transfer Alerting Service.

Whether or not you attended PIDapalooza21, and whether or not you made it through the full 24 hours, you can read up on what you missed. Five Scholarly Kitchen chefs (Alice Meadows, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Todd Carpenter, Judy Luther, Phil Jones)  shared their experiences. You can also “relive” PIDapalooza 2021 for yourself on the dedicated YouTube channel.

On December 9, 2020, the Library for Foreign Literature and the Russian State Library (RSL), with the support of the Russian Library Association and  the IFLA Russian-Language Center at the RSL, held an online round table Russian Libraries at IFLA: New Forms of Engagement. The main goal was to raise awareness of the Russian library community about changes in the IFLA governance structure, the content of amendments proposed to be introduced into the IFLA Charter, the results of the IFLA General Assembly held in November 2020, and the strategic tasks until 2024.

On 26 January 2021, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Mishustin signed an order, transferring the duties of the Russian Book Chamber to the Russian State Library. The decision should advance the implementation of government initiatives, proposed by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and other agencies, aimed at the development of literacy and literature. The merger of workflows, technologies, and best practices will eliminate duplication of efforts in such areas as cataloguing, accounting, and storage, streamline the digital transformation of the legal deposit system, reduce costs for publishers, and ultimately, improve compliance with the legal deposit regulations.

Two librarians from the Latin American and Iberian Collections team at Cambridge University Library have tackled problems related to Open Access books’ metadata and accessibility. From a particular case regarding work publications by CLACSO (Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, a network of 700 research institutions from 52 countries), this article points out the challenges that librarians encounter when dealing with Open Access books with poor bibliographic description. Nearly 200 CLACSO records were updated and enriched, which led to discuss the broader issues and challenges that poor-quality metadata for Open Access books imply.

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) members released their journal subscription cost data for collections and packages negotiated by Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), as part of their commitment to greater transparency of licensing information. The current release, which is accessible via the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR), covers subscription costs for 2019-2020.

On 29 January 2021, the article “Preservation of open access articles – is long-term storage guaranteed?” by Jo Chapman appeared in The Publication Plan. This article mentions the ongoing collaboration between DOAJ, CLOCKSS, Internet Archive, Keepers Registry/ISSN International Centre and Public Knowledge Project (PKP) regarding diamond OA journal preservation.

When you are checking a journal, three of the initial checks to carry out are to find out if the ISSN number a publisher is using is recognized by the ISSN Portal. You may also check whether they are members of COPE and DOAJ. The Predatory Publishing team has developed a web page that enables you to check whether a journal is recognized by these organizations. This tool allows you to do an aggregated search of the three websites at once. The URL to access the web page is https://predatory-publishing.com/ISSNCheck/?issn=1234-5678. Please note you have to replace the ISSN at the end of the link with the ISSN you are looking up.

The Russian Federation has declared 2021 as a year of Science and Technology – which predicts an increase in the sphere of scientific publications, writes Julia Peregudova.

According to the SCImago Journal & Country Rank, Russia is 10th in the list of countries in terms of published documents in 2019. However, there are many obstacles that non-English speaking authors face before the successful publication in international journals.

The widely used academic database Scopus hosts papers from more than 300 potentially ‘predatory’ journals that have questionable publishing practices, an analysis has found.  Their presence on Scopus and other popular research databases raises concerns that poor-quality studies could mislead scientists and pollute the scientific literature. Scopus has stopped adding content from most of the flagged titles for re-evaluation. But an analysis titled Predatory publishing in Scopus: evidence on cross-country differences published in Scientometrics highlights how poor-quality science is infiltrating literature. The authors of this study conclude that Scopus needs to find a way to fact-check whether the journal adheres to the declared editorial practices, including most prominently how the peer-review process is performed in practice.

On January 28, 2021, COAR launched the Notify: Repository and Services Interoperability Project. The aim is to develop a standard and interoperable approach that will link reviews and endorsements from different services with the research outputs housed in the distributed network of preprint servers, archives, and repositories.

COAR has already developed a proposed model for (bi-directionally) linking resources held in repositories with related resources held in networked services using a distributed, message-oriented approach based on W3C Linked Data Notifications (LDN). The COAR model is described and illustrated in Modelling Overlay Peer Review Processes with Linked Data Notifications.

DOAJ’s mission is to increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, open access scholarly research journals globally, regardless of discipline, geography or language. DOAJ is committed to being 100% independent and maintaining all of its primary services and metadata as free for everyone. See the details of their stategy until the end of 2022.

This contribution examines the distinctive, non-commercial approach to open access (OA) found in Latin America and reflects on how greater diversity in OA infrastructures helps to address inequalities in global knowledge production as well as knowledge access. Kathleen Shearer/COAR and Arianna Becerril-García/Redalyc.org, AmeliCA, argue that bibliodiversity, rather than adoption of standardized models of OA, is central to the development of a more equitable system of knowledge production.

The characteristics of the 123 Latin American journals found in DOAJ that charge to publish (APC) are shown in this study. More than half of these journals charge very low prices and most belong to public universities and scientific societies. Finally, the author recommends that universities develop collaborative models for journals and warns that these APC outbreaks fail to spread across the subcontinent.

(Article in Spanish)

LA Referencia’s partner country, Argentina, has generated national initiatives in the area of Repositories and Open Access, among which stand out the Sistema Nacional de Repositorios Digitales en Ciencia y Tecnología (National System of Digital Repositories in Science and Technology). This interinstitutional initiative aims to form an interoperable network of digital repositories in science and technology, from the establishment of policies, standards and protocols common to all members of the System.

Learn more about the Argentinian portal of Digital repositories.

This webinar organized by OASPA will explore the question of open metadata with regard to books. What are the relations, challenges, and opportunities of developing open book metadata in terms of labor, quality, persistence, standardization, accessibility, and discoverability?

Please connect live for this free webinar and contribute to the discussion by registering here.

The UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship/Copyright for Knowledge E-books is organizing a webinar. The speakers will examine the acute difficulties for higher education and public libraries caused by publishers’ pricing and licensing practices and discuss possible solutions.

The webinar is free to attend but if you would like to join us please register via Eventbrite.

This congress is organized by the State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPSTL SB RAS), Novosibirsk, together with the National Library of Russia.

Topic: Bibliographic Information in Digital Culture

Register and submit your abstract before 15 March in Russian / English.