1. Identifiers: Their Care and Feeding - Best Practices
and New Developments for Scholarly Publishers
Institutional Identifiers
Helen Henderson
Ringgold

2. Purpose of Institutional Identifier
o Identify institutions of all types. Each identifier will
be globally unique and will represent sufficient
metadata to differentiate institutions
unambiguously.
o Identify institutions engaged in the selection,
purchase, licensing, storage, description,
management and delivery of information
(“information supply chain”).

3. What is the need?
o Marketing
o Licensing
o Delivery and entitlements
o Access rights
o Hierarchy

4. Organizations
o D-U-N-S …. and many tax related o OCLC Symbol
identifiers o Library identifier
o Related to corporate entities o Maintained by OCLC
o ISIL (International Standard o ISNI (International Standard
Identifier for Libraries - ISO Name Identifier – ISO 27729)
15511) o Recently adopted
o Libraries only o Emphasis on individuals
o National agencies o Central registry
o Registration agencies
o MARC Org Code
o Library identifier
o Maintained by LC

5. More organizations
o OCLC WorldCat Registry ID
o Library identifier
o Voluntary registration and maintenance
o NISO I2
o International Institutional Identifier
o Hierarchical structure with relationships
o Identifies “licensing units”
o Ringgold Identifier
o 220,000 institutions or institutional entities
o Worldwide, all categories
o Used by over 50 publishers and agents

6. People
o ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier)
o “Names” include people and organizations
o Initial emphasis rights holders
o Maintained by International ISNI Agency (consortium of national
libraries and bibliographic utilities)
o Virtual International Authority File
o Jointly run by LC, BnF, DNB and OCLC
o Implemented and hosted by OCLC
o ~20 files from around the world
o 13 million name records
o 10 million clusters
o Plan to include other names
• Corporations, works, geographics, families, imaginary characters,
etc.

7. More People
o Proprietary Author Identifiers
o Scopus (Elsevier)
o Scholar Universe (COS)
o Researcher ID (Thomson Reuters)
o RePEc (Research Paper in Economics)
o ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID)
o Open version of Thomson Reuter’s Researcher ID
o Most ‘social’
• Claiming IDs; Interactive verification of associated works; Pulling
together several current initiatives
o Driven by STM, university communities
o Primarily interested in researchers; Large number of participants
o Mostly concerned with present and future names

8. Pain Points – where does it hurt?

9. Pain Points – Information Chain
Workflow
o Missing issues – subscription not starting
o Lost access to electronic journals
o Confusion over renewals
o Problems with titles that moved to a new
publisher.
o Resolve issues with identifier
o Accurate (and quick) entry of order
o Change in agents
o Change in publishers
o Change in online hosts
o Update in IP ranges

10. NISO I2
o Working Group of stakeholders
o Libraries
o Archives
o Consortia
o Subscription agents
o Distributors
o Publishers
o Hosting Services
o Bibliographic utilities

11. Scenarios
o Electronic Resources
• Agents
• Publishers
• Hosting services
o Institutional repositories
• Libraries
• Archives
o Library workflows

12. Existing Identifiers Investigated for use
with I2
Identifier Name Current Status
ISIL (ISO 15511) International Standard
OCLC symbol OCLC specific
OCLC WorldCat Registry ID OCLC specific
MARC organization code MARC standard
ISNI (ISO 27729) ISO 27729
SAN Standard address number NISO standard Z39.43-1993
GLN Global location number GS1 (formerly EAN international)
DUNS Data Universal Numbering Dun and Bradstreet
International Standard for Describing Institutions with New standard 2008 – International Council on Archives
Archival Holdings Information (ISDIAH)

13. Metadata Requirements
Data Element Sub-Element or Attribute Definition Function
institution Identifier attribute: typeOrSource String of characters serving to uniquely identify an institution Identify, Obtain
Alternative or supplementary identifier that identifies an
alternate Identifier attribute: typeOrSource Find, Identify, Obtain
institution
Primary or preferred name under which an institutional
name language Find, Identify, Select
entity or organization operates
type Primary type of institution Find, Identify
Other names (legal, common, etc.) by which an institution is
Variant Name usageDate: from, language Find
known
country, state or region, city, Group of data elements that give a geographic location or
location Identify, Select
language place associated with an institution
URL Uniform resource locator to the website of the institution Identify, Select
domain Domain(s) registered to the institutional entity Identify, Select
Complex element for any related organization that is
important for either differentiating the organization being
Related organization identifier Find, Identify, Select
registered from other organizations or to uniquely identify
the organization being registered.
Uniform resource locator to contact information for the
Contact information Find
institution
Free text field for addition of information considered
note Select
necessary for further clarification
type type of institution Find, Identify

14. Features and Attributes
o Can identify all organizations in the
information supply chain
o Be opaque
o Support the creation a core metadata set that
describes an institution
o Support registration of institutions in a
decentralized manner
o Address community-specific registry needs
o Allow URI(s) from 3rd-party registries to be
submitted and stored

15. Central registry
o Assign identifiers to new institution records
o Store core metadata about those institutions
o Provide look-up services to allow participating
member registries to see if an institution has
already been identified
o Provide one or more web-based Application
Programming Interfaces (APIs)

16. ISNI
o Comparing metadata
o Canvassing for Registration Agencies
o www.isni.org
o www.niso.org/workrooms/i2

17. Thank you
Questions?
helen@ringgold.com