DOAJ does not allow provisional ISSNs. Applications which contain provisional ISSNs are rejected without review. Therefore, DOAJ insists that publishers, when submitting their application to DOAJ, check the ISSN Portal, and make sure that the ISSN(s) for their journal(s) is confirmed and that the title(s) match the one mentioned on their website and in their application form.

Note: Provisional records may be created for pre-publication ISSN assignment, and are only confirmed once proof of publication has been provided to the ISSN network. Provisional records can only be viewed by ISSN National Centres and not by subscribers of the ISSN Register as available at http://portal.issn.org.

Judith Zoltánné Szilvássy began her career as a librarian at the Central Library of the Budapest University of Technology from 1951 to 1957. She then worked at the Széchényi National Library from 1958 to 1991. She devoted her life and work to librarianship. She led important projects such as the establishment of the Hungarian ISDS Centre, which became the Hungarian ISSN Centre in the 1990s, the modernization of the Central Catalogue of Foreign Journals, and the launch of the National Periodicals Database (NPA). In 1990, when Hungary became a member of the Council of Europe, Judith Zoltánné Szilvássy was invited to establish the Council of Europe Information and Documentation Centre within the Hungarian Parliamentary Library. She headed this centre until 1998.

Her professional career has also been remarkable in the international arena: she served on the Board of the ISDS including as president, later the Governing Board of ISSN International Centre, from 1976 to 1992. In 1987, after the sudden death of Marie Rosenbaum, Director and Founder of the ISDS International Centre, she was Acting Director of the Centre for one year. Thanks to her language skills (English, French and German), Judith Zoltánné Szilvássy has carried out several international missions at the request of UNESCO, the Council of Europe, ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IFLA.

Her main area of interest was periodical management. IFLA’s Serial Publications Section, which later became the Serial Publications and Other Continuing Resources Section (SOCRS), entrusted her with editing a manual on periodicals which was published in 1996 under the title Basic Serials Management Handbook. This manual has been translated into several languages (French, Russian, Spanish). It was also published in Hungarian in 2006 with updated content. By teaching librarianship to her young colleagues, she has shared her experience and knowledge with the new generation of librarians.

Judith Zoltánné Szilvássy’s career is recounted in an interview she gave in 2015 to Gaëlle Béquet, the current director of the ISSN International Centre, on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the ISSN system. Judith Zoltánné Szilvássya was already retired but showed an enduring interest in her profession. The interview was published in the special issue of the journal Ciência da informação (No. 44, 2015) of the Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (IBICT), which manages the ISSN Centre in Brazil. The interview is available online.

The ISSN International Centre extends its condolences to the family and colleagues of Judith Zoltánné Szilvássy.

On 10 May 2020, Dr G. Mahesh, the head of India’s  National Science Library and director of the ISSN National Centre of India, accepted a new role at the ISSN Centre’s  host institution,  CSIR-NISCAIR (National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources). As a Principal Scientist, he has been appointed to  take a new position at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the umbrella organization under which CSIR-NISCAIR and 37 other such S&T organizations belong. Dr G. Mahesh will join the newly formed “Science Communication and Dissemination Directorate”. G. Mahesh is also the Project Leader and Coordinator of the National Knowledge Resource Consortium (NKRC) that facilitates access to numerous electronic resources to all the CSIR and DST Institutions in the country.

A new director of the ISSN National Centre will be appointed very soon.

The lockdown had affected the ISSN National Centre of India activities for more than a month. However, since early May, most of the ISSN services are back to normal.

The International Standard Serial Number International Centre (ISSN IC) partnership with ORCID has resulted in improved accessibility and easier discovery of authoritative information about academic journals and where scholarly articles are published.

ORCID utilizes the machine readable ISSN Portal, building upon its existing functionality, to look up journal names at the authoritative source and display that data within ORCID records. Notably this new functionality better connects researchers with their peer review activity, allowing scientific publishers to acknowledge the huge amount of effort put in by researchers. The ORCID registry currently has a total of 1,528,407 peer reviews linked to 28,407 different ISSNs. This number will grow in the near future.

As of January 1st, 2020, the ISSN Portal contained more than 2.1 million Confirmed records.
58,000 new ISSN were assigned in 2019 and 247,337 records were updated during the same period.
You can find the detailed 2019 statistics at https://www.issn.org/under…/the-issn-international-register/.

Due to the pandemic of COVID-19 in France and the measures imposed by the French authorities to limit contagion, ISSN International Center staff work from home.

In the current circumstances, we kindly advise you, whenever possible, to pay your ISSN credits and your subscriptions to the ISSN International Center services by credit card in order to facilitate the management of your requests.

The two resolutions submitted to vote by ISO TC46/SC9 regarding ISO standard 3297 were officially approved by 20 national standard bodies on March 17th, 2020. A final draft of ISSN standard will be balloted by ISO in the coming weeks.

Due to the COVID-19 global outbreak and health and social measures imposed by several national authorities, the ISSN Governing Board and the ISSN Member Countries voted to cancel all in-person meetings and the International Conference that were to take place in Paris in April 2020.

Instead of the General Assembly in-person meeting, the ISSN International Centre will organize distant meetings.

The ISSN International Centre operates remotely and responds to all your requests concerning the use of its services (ISSN Portal, Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources, Keepers Registry, Enhanced Transfer Alerting Service, ISSN assignments to serials and continuing resources). Do not hesitate to contact us by email or via Facebook and Twitter.

Due to the COVID-19 global outbreak and health and social measures imposed by many national authorities, ISSN National Centres and their hosting institutions may encounter technical and operational issues. This particular situation may have an impact on the timely management of publishers’ ISSN requests and ISSN assignments. Unfortunately, the ISSN International Centre cannot currently replace impacted ISSN National Centres and manage all ISSN requests and assignments. If ISSN National Centres and their hosting institutions are temporary closed due to this crisis, the ISSN International Centre invites publishers to be patient and renew their requests regularly. We thank you for your understanding.