Re: E-ISSN?

I think it is worth looking at what is out on the web already and consider what it would take to mark it up sensibly with schema.org for different approaches. For example from http://www.ajaonline.org/about
"The American Journal of Archaeology (ISSN 0002-9114; E-ISSN 1939-828X),..."

This seems perfectly readable and understandable to a human user who has some familiarity with journals. Given time I could dig out some examples of libraries having single records for print/electronic copies, and some publishers list both ISSNs on a single page for a journal.

My concern would be that if we force these to split out into different statements of title + issn in schema.org we are going against the 'low barrier to implementation' that schema.org has aimed for in terms of data publishers, and possibly make the human readable representation of the data more awkward while making the machine readable version better/easier to consume. Ideally I'd like to spend some time digging out some examples of existing journal displays (not just from library catalogues) and seeing how they markup with different approaches, but unfortunately I'm not going to be able to do that this week.

Owen

Owen Stephens
Owen Stephens Consulting
Web: http://www.ostephens.com
Email: owen@ostephens.com
Telephone: 0121 288 6936

On 24 Nov 2013, at 15:12, Ross Singer <ross.singer@talis.com> wrote:

> I'm not deeply emotionally invested which decision is made, but it seems like just having "ISSN" will be enough. As we've established, there's really no such thing as an eissn (as a distinct property) and while issn-l is, I'd be more interested to see how it's useful (in a schema context) before we accommodate it.
> 
> I guess I already hate dealing having to look for issn and eissn properties when parsing serials data, adding another place to look just seems unnecessarily complicated for the consumer.
> 
> That said, if a compelling argument can be made, I'm not going to argue against it.
> 
> -Ross.
> On Nov 24, 2013 9:42 AM, "Karen Coyle" <kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On 11/23/13 3:44 PM, Owen Stephens wrote:
> >>
> >> I think the ISSN registry does indeed treat these as the 'ISSN' - so the
> >> eISSN isn't a different kind of ISSN but just a different label for the
> >> ISSN applied to an electronic publication.
> >>
> >> However there is a lot of common practice that treats the concept of the
> >> journal 'title' as being something apart from the actual instantiations
> >> and so groups the print and electronic versions together, thus needing
> >> to differentiate through the use of the 'e' prefix for one of the ISSNs.
> >> Two systems I'm involved in (KB+ and GOKb) do this I'm afraid to say,
> >> and it is common practice in other 'knowledgebases' (SFX, SS360 etc.) as
> >> well as being pretty much baked into the KBart guidelines
> >> (http://www.uksg.org/kbart/s5/guidelines/data_field_labels).
> >>
> >> The ISSN-L is, as you say, an ISSN used to link things together but as
> >> far as I understand it the ISSN-L is simple one of the existing ISSNs
> >> for the title (not necessarily the ISSN for the print version, although
> >> it commonly is) and is not intended as a separate identifier but simply
> >> that one of the identifiers plays an additional role - although I'm not
> >> sure this isn't just messing about with the semantics to be honest, and
> >> in any case I don't think really helps us.
> >
> >
> > Here's what the page [1] says:
> >
> > *****
> >
> > Do publishers need to indicate when they are using ISSN-L as opposed to an ISSN?
> >
> > Yes, in order for the ISSN-L to work effectively, publishers need to clearly indicate when they are using an ISSN-L as opposed to an ISSN.
> >
> > The ISO standard recommendations for printing and displaying ISSN-L are as follows: “the linking ISSN shall be clearly distinguished as such by use of the label ISSN-L. In such cases, the label ISSN-L shall be written in uppercase and a space shall precede the 8 digits of the linking ISSN. Example : ISSN-L 0251-1479”.
> >
> > *****
> >
> > It looks like LC has gone through their existing serial file and automagically created the ISSN-L subfield in the 022 (these are from old journals):
> >
> > 022     __ |a 0096-5340 |l 0096-5340
> > 022     __ |a 0006-3541 |l 0006-3541
> >
> > I can find some usage by searching on "ISSN-L":
> >
> > "Print edition: ISSN-L 2247 - 9880. Online edition: ISSN 2247 - 9880"
> >
> > "Editor-in-Chief:Dr. Ecaterina Patrascu
> > Frequency:Monthly
> > ISSN 2286-4822
> > ISSN-L 2286-4822"
> >
> > So it *is* being used - I was wrong about that.
> >
> > The question, though, is whether we need an actual property for the ISSN-L, or whether we can put this and the eISSN into an ISSN field. And if the latter, do we leave/put the "ISSN-L" or "eISSN" in the string value for the property?
> >
> > As I said to Diane, this gets us back to the "non-URI" identifiers question. How far do we want to go to accommodate these? What use cases exist that would help us decide?
> >
> > kc
> >
> > [1] http://www.issn.org/2-22637-What-is-an-ISSN-L.php
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >> To address the questions:
> >> The concept of the 'eISSN' is useful as long as people continue to
> >> represent the print and electronic versions as part of the same 'record'
> >> - and I don't see this changing at the moment
> >> I'm not confident that we can ignore the ISSN-L - this is a relatively
> >> recent concept and my instinct is use will grow over the next few years
> >> - again it is something that has been discussed in both the GOKb and KB+
> >> projects although no specific use yet I think there will be once we have
> >> the data available.
> >>
> >> Owen
> >>
> >>
> >> Owen Stephens
> >> Owen Stephens Consulting
> >> Web: http://www.ostephens.com
> >> Email: owen@ostephens.com <mailto:owen@ostephens.com>
> >>
> >> Telephone: 0121 288 6936
> >>
> >> On 22 Nov 2013, at 23:10, Karen Coyle <kcoyle@KCOYLE.NET
> >> <mailto:kcoyle@KCOYLE.NET>> wrote:
> >>
> >>> One of the examples I added includes the E-ISSN. I have mixed feelings
> >>> about this, but I suspect it is quite common in metadata. (It seems to
> >>> me that it should be an ISSN attached to an electronic publication,
> >>> not a different kind of ISSN... oh well.) There is also the ISSN-L,
> >>> which fortunately does not seem to be referred to much, so I hope we
> >>> can ignore it.
> >>>
> >>> If you haven't run into ISSN-L, it is the ISSN of the print copy, and
> >>> is presumably used to gather the various formats (E, print, whatever)
> >>> together. The "L" stands for "linking." From the ISSN agency page:
> >>>
> >>> ISSN-L 0264-2875
> >>>            Printed version: Dance research = ISSN 0264-2875
> >>>            Online version: Dance research (Online) = ISSN 1750-0095
> >>>
> >>> If you know of a growing use of these, please speak up. I haven't run
> >>> into them, but I'm not watching any serials databases carefully. Also,
> >>> if E-ISSNs are falling out of use, then we can skip those. Anyone?
> >>>
> >>> kc
> >>> --
> >>> Karen Coyle
> >>> kcoyle@kcoyle.net <mailto:kcoyle@kcoyle.net> http://kcoyle.net
> >>> m: 1-510-435-8234
> >>> skype: kcoylenet
> >>>
> >>
> >
> > -- 
> > Karen Coyle
> > kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
> > m: 1-510-435-8234
> > skype: kcoylenet
> >