The ISSN for Online Publications
As well as print publications, the ISSN can be assigned to continuing resources published online. Online publications assigned an ISSN are catalogued both in the Finnish national bibliography and the international ISSN Portal database. Because the serial records in the ISSN Portal are hyperlinked to the publications themselves, we recommend that the URL of your publication's first display is kept as permanent as possible.
The same ISSN is used for different formats (PDF, HTML) of the same online publication. If there is a paper version of that publication, it will be assigned a separate ISSN.
ISSN guidelines
The Finnish National ISSN Centre assigns ISSNs to online journals and series in a traditional form (i.e. separate issues/volumes with a common title) as well as to integrating resources that are updated on a continuous basis, e.g. article databases (fulltext databases) or news services (including self-written/edited material).
According to the international ISSN guidelines an integrating resource must fulfill the following criteria for ISSN assignment:
- There is an editorial content
- There is an identified editorial responsibility
- there is a consistent title
- There is a valid URL
- The resource has a subject-related content or has an identified subject-related audience
An integrating resource which fulfills the following criteria is not eligible for ISSN:
- Personal resources with the focus on this person
- Resources focusing on a company, a product, an institution or organization
- ephemeral resources (short-lived publication)
- resources of purely local interest
The criteria in the website of the International ISSN Centre:
http://www.issn.org/2-22638-ISSN-and-electronic-publications.php
Please, notice that an ISSN will not be assigned to an online publication until it has been published. If the access to your online publication is restricted, we ask you to send us the first issue/version of the publication in PDF format.
The application of an ISSN must include the URL of the online publication. In order to ensure access to the publication also in the future, the ISSN Centre should be notified immediately of a change of URL. You can do this by submitting the electronic form: Change of URL.
