The International ISSN Centre and the network of nearly 100 national ISSN Centres serve publishers who need unambiguous identification of their serial publications. The place of publication is crucial in determining the ISSN Centre, which is responsible for ISSN number assignment, record creation and management.
If a publisher operates in more than one country at the same time, an agreement can be made between the publisher and the ISSN Centres concerned so that all identification requests are handled by only 1 of the ISSN Centres concerned to avoid duplication of ISSN assignments.
A list of more than 300 “multinational publishers” is available on the ISSN IC website: https://www.issn.org/services/requesting-an-issn/the-issn-for-multinational-publishers/
It contains the name of the publisher, the main brand (e.g. almost 70 publishers are grouped under the Springer brand), the country/countries where the publisher operates and the responsible ISSN centre.
It also contains links to the bases:
- ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier) – an international standard name identifier designed to uniquely and globally identify so-called “public identities”, i.e. the names of individuals and corporations who are in the role of creators, producers, publishers, distributors or custodians of intellectual content
- VIAF (Virtual International Authority File) – an international set of name authorities, a joint project of several national libraries and catalogues (initially the German National Library and the US LoC) managed by the Online Computer Library Center.