ISSN IC’s proposal to MARC Advisory Committee about Defining a New Field for Cluster ISSNs in the MARC 21 Formats

Cluster ISSN is a new concept defined in ISO 3297:2020. Cluster ISSNs are identifiers that allow an ISSN designated by a specific prefix, e.g., ISSN-L 0302-9743, to identify a group of related continuing resources.

This proposal is to define a new repeatable field (023), to provide a field that is distinct from the ISSN field (022) for this separate data element. Another goal is to allow the URIs associated with each Cluster ISSN to be linked unambiguously with their corresponding Cluster ISSN. Anticipation of future Cluster ISSNs with their associated URIs necessitates a new repeatable field to provide a separate field for each Cluster ISSN and its associated URIs. The result is a unique ISSN (ISSN-H) that will group the successive titles held by a publication over time.

In May 2023, the proposal was made available to the MARC community for discussion whose result will be known on 28 June 2023.