Harvard University Library, Cambridge, USA, hosted a presentation by Gaëlle Béquet, the Director of the ISSN International Centre, Paris on April 2nd, 2025. Gaelle spoke about the history and impact of the ISSN, an industry standard identifier for print and digital serials and continuing resources, and recent achievements of the ISSN Centre on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. The vision of the Centre is to develop high quality, global information services for serials and continuing resources based on international standards and multilateral co-operation. The presentation was attended by 40 colleagues both in person and online.

Long-term archiving is at the heart of Persée’s commitment and today Persée joins the Keepers Registry service managed by the ISSN International Centre.

The Keepers Registry is a free online service. Partner archives provide the ISSN International Centre with data on the titles they hold.

Thanks to the ISSN, this data is linked to each title in the ISSN portal to inform the library and publishing community about the long-term preservation of this cultural and scientific heritage. It is possible to retrieve this data for long-term preservation by subscribing to the Submit.Retrieve.Reuse service.

Gabrielle Richard, Director of Persée, stresses that “referencing, openness and preservation are the challenges of scientific publishing and the creation of digital collections”.

Gaëlle Béquet, Director of the ISSN International Centre, welcomes the arrival of this new partner: “We are delighted to be working with our colleagues at Persée to better disseminate information on the long-term preservation of French-language scholarly content.”

The evaluation of the ISSN International Centre’s 2020-2024 Strategic Plan highlights key achievements, challenges and future goals. Achievements include the creation of cluster ISSNs for better resource tracking and the expansion of the Keepers Registry to 20 agencies for the preservation of digital and print serials. The network grew with the addition of six new National Centres, despite delays due to complex procedures. Challenges included limited progress in improving the interoperability of the ISSN portal through the integration of ISNIs and the implementation of persistent URLs. Future plans aim to build on these achievements while addressing outstanding issues.