The InterAcademy Partnership is pleased to announce the launch of its report “Combatting Predatory Journals and Conferences”! To celebrate the publication of this report, to which ISSN Network’s members contributed, IAP hosted a free online webinar on 16 March 2022. This event brought together members of key stakeholder groups to discuss the rise of predatory journals and conferences and the recommendations of IAP’s report for a global, systemic action plan to address these pervasive and damaging practices. This report is the culmination of a two-year study, Combatting Predatory Academic Journals and Conferences, funded by The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which has explored these practices more comprehensively and inclusively than any previously.

The Ukrainian ISSN Center continues to process requests for serial identification submitted by Ukrainian publishers. To contact ISSN Ukraine, please use the form available at https://www.issn.org/centre/ukraine/.

The National Library of the Philippines (NLP) through the Bibliographic Services Division (BSD) launched the use of the International Standard Numbering Systems-Philippine Online Application System (INS-POAS) on July 1, 2021. It enables an easy retrieval of data and easy access to information. NLP published a report regarding the second semester of 2021, with notably 550 ISSN assignment requests.

Regina Romano Reynolds, Director of the US ISSN Centre, Library of Congress, will give a virtual presentation at the Library Publishing Forum on  18 May 2022 at 4pm. Entitled Can THAT have an ISSN? A guide to the wide range of resources covered by ISSN,  this presentation is aimed at supporting the ISSN Network’s effort to communicate the expanded scope of ISSN.  Since libraries often publish such resources as newsletters, blogs, institutional repositories, conference proceedings, this is a good forum at which to share this information.

View the program and register.

The U.S. ISSN Center is hosting three interns who are undertaking this project overseen by director of the U.S. ISSN Center, Regina Romano Reynolds, with the assistance of ISSN senior librarian, Karen Ross. The project’s goal is to explore the risk that characterizing journals as “predatory” might pose to legitimate journals from countries with less-developed publishing practices and to explore the role that the ISSN Network has in determining a journal’s quality. The interns will research scholarly and popular literature, observe U.S. ISSN Center processes and conduct interviews with the ISSN International Centre, as well as with representatives of Open Access stakeholders. The project would include whether and how having an ISSN might play a role in the ranking systems and how some new open access journals from the Global South might suffer the stigma of “predatory” simply based on their location. The report will be made available within the Library of Congress and the ISSN Network and potentially form the basis of a professional article.

Gaëlle Béquet, Director of ISSN International Centre, spoke about the Transfer Alerting Service during the webinar organized by NISO on 14 March 2022 about the Transfer Code of Practice, a Recommended Practice most recently updated in 2019 and being evaluated for updates.

ISSN International Centre representatives will attend the conference and hold a booth. UKSG will be delivering the event both in-person in Telford, UK, and digitally.

Save the date: May 30 2022 – 10:00 to June 01 2022 – 13:15.

View the programme.

The Core Continuing Resources Cataloging Committee (CRCC) invites anyone involved with continuing resources to attend their longstanding, popular CRCC Forum. This annual event offers a venue for catalogers and serialists to gather and share ideas and updates within the continuing resources community.

Scheduled are: Regina Reynolds, Director, U.S. ISSN Center at the Library of Congress; Paul Frank & Melanie Polutta, both with Policy, Training, and Cooperative Programs Division, Library of Congress; Hien Nguyen, CONSER Coordinator, Cooperative Programs and Policy Section Head, Library of Congress; and Steve Shadle, Head of Serials Cataloging, University of Washington, who will present on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

Save the date and register: February 24, 2022, 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. PST (2:00 p.m-3:30 p.m. EST).

Project JASPER was launched in November 2020 by DOAJ, CLOCKSS, Internet Archive, Keepers Registry and Public Knowledge Project to start addressing the problem of journals disappearing from the web, a phenomenon evidenced by research. ISSN International Centre’s partner, DOAJ, is keen to update the community on the progress to date. The project’s testing phase was launched, with the establishment and development of a process to ingest journal titles and the sustained commitment of the founding organisational partners; PKP has updated the documentation about the Open Journal System preservation features and Internet Archive has joined Keepers Registry. The project partners are now poised to include more journals and more preservation agencies.

Gaëlle Béquet, Director of ISSN International Centre, and Nathalie Cornic, Head of Metadata and Technical Coordination of the ISSN Network, participated in the first ISNI Library Sector Open Meeting held on 28th October 2021. Organized by the ISNI Library Sector Steering Group, the aim of the meeting was to coordinate the ISNI library-focused community as a forum for understanding library priorities for the ISNI standard, and to identify tangible actions that can move members jointly toward accomplishing shared goals. The areas of  interest identified included technical improvements on APIs and de-duplication of ISNIs; documentation on matching rules; sharing best practices and workflows, such as the use of ISNIs in authority control; and opportunities for member collaboration.