road: a new free service for identifying and selecting oa scholarly resources

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ROAD, a new free service for identifying and selecting OA resources

François-Xavier Pelegrin Head of the Bibliographic Data SectionISSN International Centre

34th Annual Charleston ConferenceIssues in Book and Serial Acquisition

Charleston (SC), November 5 – 8, 2014

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ROAD, a new free service for identifying and selecting OA resourcesCharleston Conference, 7 November 2014

The identification of scholarly resources: a long story and a constant

priority for the ISSN Network

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A story started in the 70’s

UNESCO's World Scientific Information Programme (UNISIST):

« need for an international coding system for periodical titles…for recording and disseminating accurate information on the serial literature »

Creation of the ISDS system (International Serial Data System, former name of the ISSN system) in 1974, 40 years ago

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The ISSN system today

An international network comprised of one International Centre created by UNESCO and the French Government and 88 National Centres

National Centres are hosted by National Libraries, Book Chambers, National Centres for Scientific Information

An international database, the ISSN Register: 1,8 million of bibliographic records. Available on subscription.

60 000 to 65 000 new resources identified each year by the ISSN Network

An ISO identifier for continuing resources - ISO standard 3297 (2007, under revision from 2015)

ROAD, a new free service for identifying and selecting OA resources Charleston Conference, 7 November 2014

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A priority for the ISSN Network

Daily activities: ISSN assignments on request (publishers)

Annual campaigns focused on the identification of electronic scholarly serials listed in reference databases

Partnerships with Serials Union Catalogues (France, Italy…) which tends to focus more and more on scholarly resources


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A few things to know about the ISSN identification

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A core mission: identifying serials (and other continuing resources) in an unambiguous way


Could you please renew my subscription to

Nature ?

My paper will be published in the next

issue of Nature !

The Impact Factor of Nature is

38.597’

What indexing services cover

Nature ?

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Nature = ISSN 1639-1241

Nature = ISSN 0028-0836Nature = ISSN 1958-9646Nature = ISSN 1957-9098Nature = ISSN 1286-8469Nature = ISSN 1281-606XNature = ISSN 1281-606XNature = ISSN 1957-9098

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The ISSN identifies serials (journals, monographic series, conference proceedings….)

but other types of continuing resources fall under the scope of the ISSN as well: integrating resources such as databases, websites, loose-leafs

When a resource is available on different media (print, online, CD-ROM etc)

each medium version is identified by a separate ISSN

The ISSN is an identifier, not a « quality label » like the other ISO identifiers, the « purpose of the ISSN » is to identify resources in a unambiguous way, not to evaluate their quality or their validity

However, specific procedures have been established for « predatory »/ « questionable » publishers


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Context of the ROAD project

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A significant growth of (OA) scholarly resources

Citizens and researchers ask for a free access to the research ouputs (Budapest OA initiative in 2002, Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in 2003…), in particular when publicly funded

National and international policies/initiatives in favor of OA (European Commission…) as a tool for developping the economy

Development of ready-to-use systems for producing journals or repositories (Dspace)

Development of national « infrastructures » (HALE in France – Hyper Articles en Ligne)


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Dramatic growth of the number of students/researchers past 15 years worldwide

Over 3 800 institutional repositories registered in ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories) to date

10 000 journals listed in DOAJ, but more are available since DOAJ has now a more selective approach


A significant growth of (OA) scholarly resources (2)

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Questions about the quality or prominence of OA journals

Recurring questions about the quality of OA journals within the scholarly community

ISSN viewed as a quality label, a certification, in particular by young researchers


OA journals are of lower quality ?

Could you please help me in selecting the journal in

which I can publish my articles ?

This journal has an ISSN: that means it is a high

quality journal ?

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Questions about the quality or prominence of OA journals (2)


We are sorry: the evaluation of journals is made by peers or by devoted bodies or companies, not by the ISSN catalogers

That said, the ISSN is a convenient tool for aggregating information about journals….

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Confusion of roles and questionable initiatives

e.g: ISSN role (see previous slide)

e.g: confusion about indexing/abstracting services and library catalogues/legal deposit (« my journal is indexed by the British Library catalogue, it is thus a good quality journal»….)

e.g: questionable scholarly metrics are emerging (lack of transparency etc, cf Jeffrey Beal blog)


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UNESCO need for a global view of OA production worlwide

UNESCO promotes and supports the Open Access to knowledge via various programmes and actions

GOAP: snapshot of the status of Open Access (OA) to scientific information around the world (policies, initiatives, per country and geographic area)

Need for complementing GOAP by statistics about the OA production worlwide (journals, repositories etc)

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/portals-and-platforms/goap/


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A laboratory for the ISSN system and the ISSN data

ROAD is a laboratory for the future of the ISSN system and the ISSN data

Free access to ISSN data (free subset of the ISSN Register ? Free access to some data from ISSN records?)

ISSN data as linked data (RDF)

New ways for searching the ISSN Register and displaying ISSN data


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A short-term project

Beta version of ROAD has been developped in 6 months

End of April 2013: the project is validated by the Governing Board of ISSN International Centre

June-July 2013: selection of the contractors (technical developments, data checking and update)

September: beginning of the data checking, technical developments, partnerships with indexing/abstracting services, journals indicators…

December 2013: launch of the beta version


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The ROAD service

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ROAD records

ROAD is a (free) subset of the ISSN Register

ISSN records which describe OA resources are marked with a devoted code so that to be published on ROAD

ISSN records are enriched by data taken from external sources (journal indicators, indexing-abstracting services, registries…)

The matching ISSN records / coverage lists of external sources is processed thanks to the ISSN number


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ROAD records


Additional data from external sources

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Types of resources and criteria

journals conferences proceedings monographic series institutional repositories

open access to the whole content of the resource (free registration is accepted)

no moving wall the resource comprises mainly research papers the audience is mostly researchers and scholars

> ROAD codes are added by the ISSN National Centres when creating the records, or retrospectively by the ISSN International Centre


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External sources as of April 2014

PUBMED Central Medline DOAJ Econlit Catalogo (Latindex) Psych’INFO Linguistic Abstracts Scopus SJR (journal indicator) SNIP (journal indicator) The Keepers ATLA Religion Database ATLA Catholic Periodical and Literature Index CAB Astracts (CABI) Global Health (CABI)

Agreement just signed: CAS


•ATLA Religion Database

24ROAD, a new free service for identifying and selecting OA resources Charleston Conference, 7 November 2014

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Main features

Map search and faceted search

Search by country, subject, indexing-abstracting service, registries, journal indicators

Presentation of the external sources ( method/selection criteria)

Records downloadable and reusable (MARC XML and RDF from December 2014) under the license CC BY-NC 4.0


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Map search


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Faceted search


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Description of external sources


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Records downloadable and reusablein MARC XML and RDF (from December 2014)


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Next steps (1)

Technical improvements (map, responsive design)

Retrospective identification of OA resources in the ISSN Register

Identification of institutional repositories (semi-automatic assignment method)

Enrichment of ROAD records: APC (YES/NO), license, type and content of the repositories,…

Development of the classification (access by subject) so as to make it more granular

Schema.org mark-up


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Next steps (2)

Additional partnerships

Governance of the project: creation of a scientific committee

RDF outputs using the PRESSo model developped by the ISSN IC and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (currently studied by IFLA bodies for formal international approval)

http://www.issn.org/the-centre-and-the-network/our-partners-and-projects/pressoo/


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Thank you !

http://road.issn.org

franç[email protected] or [email protected]


road: a new free service for identifying and selecting oa scholarly resources

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