This Learned Publishing article, by Eti Herman, John Akeroyd, Gaelle Bequet, David Nicholas, and Anthony Watkinson, presents an up-to-date portrayal of the greatly changed landscape of scholarly journal publishing and identifies the emerging trends characterizing it. The article posits that journal transition can be seen as falling into three categories: enhanced models of the traditional scholarly journal, innovative models of the traditional scholarly journal and possible alternatives to the traditional journal. This review shows that each of the models identified makes contributions to enriching the reporting and showcasing of scholarly output. This study on the evolution of serial publications, and more particularly on the transformations of scientific journals, was commissioned by the ISSN International Centre as part of a reflection on the new multi-year development strategy of ISSN International Centre for the years 2020 to 2024.

The National Librarian, Dr. Lenrie Olatokunbo Aina, spoke at the sensitization workshop on legal deposit compliance and ISBN & ISSN, held on 9th–10th December, 2019 hosted by the Kano State Library Board, at the Murtala Muhammed Library Complex, Kano. The well-attended event was open to publishers and members of the public, and included a tweet-storm of Dr. Aina’s speech. Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, the Governor of Kano State, was a special guest. This is one example of events in which the ISSN Centre of Nigeria participates to encourage compliance by publishers, authors, printers, academicians and government printers to international standards.

COPE has released a discussion document about predatory publishing (https://publicationethics.org/predatory-publishing-discussion-document) which contains recommendations to help researchers pinpoint fake scientific journals. COPE advises researchers to search the ISSN of the publication in the ISSN Portal and verify if the ISSN is genuine and has not been assigned to another serial publication.

At PIDapalooza, the Open Festival of Persistent Identifiers, the ISSN IC Director will give a presentation about the portfolio of services provided by the ISSN portal that is expanding to support the identification of continuing resources and share information about their preservation in the digital scholarly environment. Plans to turn the ISSN portal into a hub of identifiers for digital resources and organizations are emerging. Bring your chords and your PIDs and tune in for an innovative music piece.

See the schedule.

The German National Library (Deutsche National Bibliotek, DNB) has a new website, and as does the German ISSN Centre hosted by the DNB. Contents, functionality, user guidance and the general website design have been completely revised and technically enhanced. As an expert you will find information at the entry point DNB Professional.

The U.S. ISSN Center assigned a recordbreaking 6,341 International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSN) in 2019, an increase of 10.5 percent over fiscal 2018. Of these, 2,621 ISSN, or 41 percent, were assigned to online resources. ISSN statistics over many years show that print resources continue to be published at a steady rate. The high number of ISSN assigned to publications requested by CONSER libraries in 2019 represented the successful elimination of an arrearage of more than 1,500 titles that had accumulated, partly as a result of libraries requesting ISSN for older print titles being digitized or moved to off-site storage. In 2020, the U.S. ISSN Center plans a project for more than 5,000 titles in HathiTrust and a project to assign ISSN to science blogs. Work continues on ISSN Uplink, an ISSN web form application, workflow, and communication system.

The portfolio of services provided by the ISSN portal is expanding to support the identification of continuing resources and share information about their preservation in the digital scholarly environment. Plans to make the ISSN portal a hub of identifiers are emerging. Bring your chords and your PIDs and tune in for an innovative music piece.

The Director of the ISSN International Centre gave a presentation with Peter Burnhill about Keepers Registry, the new service provided by the ISSN portal (portal.issn.org), at CNI Fall 2019 Membership Meeting. The ISSN International Centre has launched this service on 3rd December 2019. The Keepers Registry supplies information about long-term preservation of digitized and born-digital continuing resources.

The Keepers Registry, a JISC-funded service for the UK Higher Education sector from 2016 to 2019 had been maintained, so far, by EDINA at the University of Edinburgh.

The ISSN International Centre and its Governing Board value the Keepers Registry as part of the global identification infrastructure for serials. The ISSN International Centre has been a partner of the service since its inception. The ISSN International Centre will continue to make its functionality and content available for the international communities of libraries, publishers and scholars.

Since 3rd December 2019, the ISSN International Centre, in cooperation with the various contributing Keepers agencies, decided to take over this service by integrating the Keepers Data into the ISSN Portal. Please visit The Keepers Registry.

The magazine Research Information interviewed Gaëlle Béquet, Director of the ISSN International Centre, along with other publishing experts, about the hot topic of “user experience”. The issue is available here, see page 9: http://email.europascience.com/files/amf_europa_science/project_26/RInov19_web.pdf?fbclid=IwAR30u6fUE1jtnm6BhjkVDNRzBRbgoteM8NYfIxBBw7oqrnHbHQPo_FQnAq8