ISSN Italia
Member since 1972
ItalianISSN50YEARS – Making history: Italy among the ISSN founding countries
In 1972, the Italian CNR Institute of Studies for Research and Scientific Documentation ISRDS launched the Project of the National Collective Archive of Periodicals ACNP, that responded to the increasingly felt need to locate periodicals in Italian libraries, and obtain faster access to documents. The concluding report of that study recommended the creation of an International System for the Registration of Serial Publication Data ISDS and outlined its operation. UNESCO and France signed a provisional agreement in July 1972 to establish the ISDS International Centre based in Paris. From July 1974, the Italian CNR-ISRDS - by virtue of the leading role it played in the ACNP project and the European assignments held by its Director Paolo Bisogno - joined UNESCO's UNISIST Project and by government decision would set up and organise the ISDS National Centre, which would then be the Italian component of the international ISSN network. From its origins, the Italian ISSN Centre is located in Rome at the CNR; the Centre's first Director was Matilde Salimei.
Since 1985, with the international convention between the International ISDS Centre and the EAN the use of the ISSN code within the barcode gradually began to spread in Italy as well, until it became compulsory for commercial distribution as of 2005/06. In these same years, the Italian ISSN Centre moved to the Central Library of the National Research Council, where it is still located; the Head of the ISSN Section is Mrs. Flavia Cancedda.
Over the past twenty years, the Italian Centre has established itself as a leading and highly attractive service of the CNR Library, developing contacts and synergies with the world of publishing, public management and academic research. Since 2011 - and still today - it participates to the extent of its competence in the activities of the scientific production evaluation system, taking care of the appropriate international identification of Italian academic journals. In 2017, the Centre received an award at the Public Administration Forum for the E@asyISSN Project (integrated communication platform for national service users).
