Ringgold’s New Subject Taxonomy Now Published and being considered by COUNTER for the Journal Usage Factor

Ringgold Inc is proud to announce the publication of its new subject taxonomy Ringgold Subjects and it is being considered for adoption by COUNTER for use in classifying journals for the Journal Usage Factor (JUF).

Ringgold has engaged with its customers to develop a suitable and granular subject taxonomy to classify the subject interests of institutions over the last year. It undertook detailed research and a lengthy consultation process with publishers, which resulted in a widely accepted subject taxonomy that meets publisher’s needs in mapping their content to the subject interests of institutions.

COUNTER has been developing the Journal Usage Factor since 2007 in consultation with a large number of industry leaders, and with publishers participating in a number of project phases. The draft code of compliance for the JUF is available on the COUNTER website for the purpose of public consultation: www.projectcounter.org/documents/Draft_UF_R1.pdf. Peter Shepherd, COUNTER Director, said: “We have explored a number of subject taxonomies for the classification of journals within the JUF and have found Ringgold’s Subjects to be the best fit, with the most international approach, widest coverage and least geographical bias”.

Ringgold will be applying the Ringgold Subjects to its institutional database of over 350,000 institutional entities, by assessing their products, services, research interests and departmental structure. This is part of a larger re-classification of Ringgold’s Identify Database that will be rolled out in phases over the next two years. The subject element of the re-classification has been published on the Ringgold website and is openly available for use by all here www.ringgold.com/subjects. For further information please contact us.

Pulling Together: Information Flow Throughout the Scholarly Supply Chain

Laura Cox, Ringgold’s CMO, spoke at the Association of Subscription Agents Annual Conference on the 26th February. She outlined how linking data using unique and authoritative identifiers can solidify the links in the scholarly supply chain. Her presentation also discussed how data governance using identifiers enables publishers and intermediaries to work more efficiently, reduce costs and ultimately serve the scholarly community much more effectively. Laura’s PowerPoint presentation is available to view here. An account of Laura’s presentation can be found on the ALPSP blog.

Identify Database New Hierarchy Subscription Display

See here for news about Identify‘s new hierarchy subscription display.

Audit Files for Humans

Ringgold is pleased to announce an enhancement to our Auditing Service: Audit Files for Humans (AFFH).

Sent in the convenient format of an Excel spreadsheet, Audit Files for Humans allow you to immediately analyse your data beside Ringgold data, and allows the capability to view a complete summary of your data without waiting for it to be loaded into your internal system. Audit Files for Humans are a complementary free service in addition to our current service Audit Files for Systems, which until now were only available in CSV format.

Audit Files for Humans can be tailored to include whatever fields of data you choose and can include subscription data with or without consortia information. For further details about this service please contact Ringgold Support.

Other Identify Database News

Look for the new Help icons in and around Identify, they link to improved online guidance for users. Get detailed instructions on all sections of the database, plus search tips, user guides, and full lists of types and tiers.

Infographics

Our unique and free-to-download Infographics for March are available to download here.
View interesting visual metrics and statistics for the Identify Database and CDO.

Content

We have been taking time this quarter to focus on updating metadata to existing records.  Ringgold’s production staff have also been actively working on identifying and deleting duplicate records, and merging institutions where appropriate. Part of the review has been to add any missing URLs. Identifying URLs for records has been crucial in the de-duplicate process.

We are planning to populate the state field for institutions in all countries. We are ensuring that the name in the state field relates to the correct administrative level and that the name is applied consistently within countries.  We are currently focusing on records for Italy, the United Kingdom and India. We have also improved the way we deal with US territories (American Samoa, Guam, etc).  All relevant territories now have USA as country code and an ISO state code, as opposed to previously being given separate country codes.

Other Ringgold News

We welcome Moritz Schick as our new CDO Editor. Moritz has been with Ringgold’s Production Team since 2010 and has been promoted from a Senior Researcher.

Events

The Ringgold team will be at the following events this Spring:

• UKSG Annual Conference, Bournemouth, 8 April – stand 31
• London Book Fair, Earls Court, 15-17 April – stand O660
• STM Spring Conference, Washington DC, 30 April-2 May
• BookExpo America, New York City, 30 May-1 June – stand DZ2164
• SSP Annual Meeting, San Francisco CA, 5-7 June – stand 109

If you would like to meet up with us, get in touch to make an appointment.

Customer Support and Availability Over Easter

Ringgold will be closed on Easter Sunday, 31 March, but will be operating during the rest of the weekend with a skeleton staff. We will, however, deal with any general or technical enquiries promptly upon our return. Validate will still be available but customers will not recieve reports on either Good Friday or Easter Monday. Identify will be updated on April 2 as normal.

Our new customer support website is now live at https://support.ringgold.com. Find help for all of our products and easy access to downloadable user guides, editorial policies and news. Links to the site can be found within CDO, Identify and Validate.

Have you had a change of staff since you started using our products? Let us know so that we can make sure they are getting the correct access and are informed about the latest technical updates.

Easter Fun

Some Easter-releated institutions in the Identify Database:
ID 44089 – Egg Nutrition Center, USA
ID 293725 – Easter College, PH
ID 72464 – Chocolate Manufacturers Association, USA
ID 190126 – White Rabbit Treatment Homes, CAN
ID 182807 – Lamb County Library, USA
ID 79128 – Spring Meadows Hospital, IN
ID 130058 – Daffodil International University, BD
ID 202792 – Holy Cross University in Kielce, PL