May 27, 2014, by Graham Kendall

International Standard Serial Number: Explained

We we do our MyRA return we insist that you supply the ISSN (and DOI) for any publications that you enter into your e-staff profile.

But what is an ISSN, and why do we need it?

In the same way that an ISBN uniquely identifies a book, an ISSN uniquely identifies a periodical publication.

This is useful for two reasons.

1. It enables us to ensure that the journal that you are referring to, is the correct journal. It may be obvious to you, being an expert in the discipline, what journal you are referring to but a spelling mistake, or an incorrect abberviation might lead to some confusuion.
2. Having a unique identifier enables us to look up things like ISI and Scopus impact factors. This is not so easy (if not impossible) with just the journal name.

The ISSN for a journal is available from either the journals home page, or from bibliographic search engines such as Web of Science and Scopus.

Please supply it.

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