The Director of the Spanish ISSN Centre, Consuelo López Provencio, becomes Head of the Bibliographic Control of Serial Publications Department at the National Library of Spain. Patricia Martín Villalba becomes Head of the National ISSN Centre. Welcome to the ISSN Network, Patricia!

ISSN International Centre is a proud supporter of Think. Check. Submit. as well as a contributing organisation and long-standing committee member.

Established in 2015, Think. Check. Submit. was developed with the support of an international coalition of organisations from across scholarly communications in response to discussions about deceptive publishing and amid a growing number of new and unfamiliar publishing options available for researchers.

Think. Check. Submit. provides a range of tools and practical resources to educate researchers, promote integrity, and build trust in credible research and publications. Separate checklists for journals and books are available to guide researchers through the key criteria for selecting where to publish their research and are also invaluable to scholarly communications professionals who are advising researchers about these issues.  Translations of the checklists are also available in a number of languages.

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).