After some extreme winter weather both in the UK and US, we are looking forward to a warm and settled season ahead – both atmospherically and professionally. We hope you like the new layout of our newsletter. Use the links on the right to jump down to any section of interest and click the icons to follow us on social networks. Please feel free to contact us at info@ringgold.com with any questions or comments.

Ringgold Webinar Series in January & February
‘New Year’s Resolution: Getting Your Data Into Shape’

Throughout January and February, we conducted a series of webinars to provide scholarly publishers with tools and information to better manage data, and understand some of the trends in the changing data landscape. Getting data in shape often seems like an insurmountable and never-ending task: with data held in multiple silos, created by an array of users, and growing at a rapid rate, where do you even start? And what do standard identifiers like ORCID, ISNI, and Ringgold IDs have to do with this anyway?

It’s enough to make a person give up, just soldier on doing things the same way as before, and suffer with data that is barely good enough for internal purposes or for customers. Our webinars were meant to banish that sense of hopelessness, and break this process up into manageable pieces.

Where should you start? Priorities & squeaky wheels are always a good place: Most of us operate with a list of annual goals in mind, or issues that need correcting. Maybe you are focusing on expanding sales in South America, or marketing a new ebook collection, or finding the gaps between your individual and institutional subscribers. What information will you need to take confident steps towards those goals? Gather those data sets and groups of records that hold the data you need.

Next Steps: Improving and cleaning your data. You might need data quickly for a short-term project, or finally be ready to implement a business intelligence system across your whole organization:

• Good: Clean up individual records by adding missing data elements and standardizing fields where you can. This is a decent first step, and will help you to be able to group and sort records, such as confidently finding all the records for your subscribers in Florida (as opposed to those in “Florida”, “Fla.” and “FL”).
• Better: Add standard identifiers for people, organizations, and pieces of content – like Ringgold IDs for institutions, ORCID IDs for authors, or ISSNs for serials. These are powerful hooks into records, a single unambiguous data element which ensures that all your records for Miami University in Ohio aren’t mistakenly grouped with those for the University of Miami in Florida.
• Best: Implement a data governance program to properly manage your data over time, so it continues to serve your business. A full program entails dedicated staff, well-structured processes, and robust infrastructure that uses quality record sets as the foundation of real business intelligence.

There is much more to data governance and standard identifiers, and we invite you to view the slides for all four webinars. Also, there are Ringgold services which can support clients regardless of the state of your data.

Thank you to those who attended, and made the webinars a success. Always feel free to contact us with ideas for future sessions, or to discuss your organization’s data challenges.

Aries integrates with Ringgold’s Identify

Many of our clients have improved the state of their institutional subscriber records using our auditing service and the Identify Database, and are now asking how they can tackle other data silos, such as authors. Embedding Ringgold IDs and normalizing author affiliations at the point of manuscript submission is one path, and Aries Systems are poised to help their clients in just this way. Aries have recently announced that Editorial Manager and ProduXion Manager v11.0 will incorporate this feature. Please contact your Aries representative for more detail, or reach out to us to discuss other options for adding Ringgold data to your author records.

ORCID and Ringgold IDs

As you may know, ORCID has been using the Ringgold ID and data to support the affiliation component of the ORCID Registry since December. We have received quite a few enquiries about this, therefore we wanted to provide more information on how this works. Please see: https://info.orcid.org/organizational-affiliations-now-part-of-orcid-record/

Identify Database update

Identify Online now contains records for all Portuguese higher education institutions and their respective faculties (first level hierarchy). Our source is the Directory of Portuguese Higher Education Institutions by the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Research DGEEC Service. The directory also provided up-to-date Size and Staff data.

We are constantly updating institutions in the Identify Database. Here are some large organizations we examined recently:
ID 96656 Takeda Pharmaceuticals International GmbH has acquired Nycomed International Management GmbH. We have updated ID 96656 to reflect the change and updated the names of all related subsidiaries.
ID 33298 Gen-Probe Inc and related records have been updated after a takeover by Hologic. If there’s a record you have noticed requires updating or can’t find a particular institution please let us know at identifier@ringgold.com.

Ringgold Types

We are continuing to work on applying subject facets (Types) to the academic section of the Identify Database, and to any newly added records. We have now completed almost 60% of the academic records, including:

• USA
• Canada
• UK
• Australia

Work is nearing completion on the major European countries and on Asia, and all other regions have been started. For a full list of completed countries and to arrange a sample of the data for testing please contact us.

CDO Update

More than 100 consortia records have been reviewed and updated since the start of the year. In addition we have added the following consortia records to CDO – among them the eLibrary Myanmar, a new consortium start up by EIFL to stimulate education and research by providing academics and students with access to information resources:

France
– ID 385779 Initiative d’excellence de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (ISTEX)

Germany
– ID 243599 Ressortforschungseinrichtungen BMVEL / AG Neue Bibliothekskonzepte (BMVEL)

Myanmar
– ID 385710 eLibrary Myanmar

United States
– ID 60623 Cooperating Libraries in Consortium (CLiC)
– ID 26525  Fenway Libraries Online (FLO)

The consortia landscape is notorious for its rate of change, and our CDO Editor, Moritz Schick, updates our 430+ CDO profiles at the rate of more than one per day. If you’d ever like to report a new consortium, or request us to review a profile so that you have the most up-to-date information in preparation for negotiations, please use our new Feedback form. You will see the button in the CDO sidebar.

Ringgold launches ProtoView

We are delighted to announce Ringgold’s newest product, ProtoView. We take your latest print and e-books, produce abstracts and enhanced metadata for each title, and supply the information to the discovery channels used by college libraries. It’s a fast and effective method to get the word out about your new books! Interested? Let us explain why ProtoView is a must-have for every scholarly publisher. Contact us for more information at info@protoview.com.

Other News from Ringgold

Change in senior management

Laura Cox has been promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer, having previously served as Ringgold’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Laura will also serve as Program Manager for Ringgold’s Institutional Information division. William (Bill) Haase has been promoted to Chief Technical Officer and will be responsible for maintaining and developing online and data services. Jay Henry has been promoted to the role of Chief Marketing Officer and will continue to act as Program Manager for Ringgold’s Scholarly Works division.

Peter Evans, an original founder of Ringgold, has retired after nearly a decade. Although he has retired, his skills will still be called on from time to time as we develop areas of our service. Our best wishes to Peter.

Ralph Shoffner continues to serve as CEO. This new structure represents the natural and expected evolution of Ringgold. Our company has been growing for 10 years, and planning for the future is always on our minds. The members of our leadership team have been contributing to Ringgold’s success for years and have developed the experience and expertise to guide our growth.

Availability over Easter

Ringgold will be closed on Easter Sunday and Monday,  April 20-21, 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 receive reports on either Good Friday or Easter Monday. Identify will be updated on April 22 as normal.

Customer support

Don’t forget, our customer support website is available 24/7 at www.ringgold.com/support. Find help for all of our products and easy access to downloadable user guides, editorial policies and news. Access to online support can be found from 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. Or schedule a training session, either one-on-one or a whole team.

Spring Fun

Some Spring-related institutions in the Identify Database:
ID 20245 – Easter Seals Inc, USA
ID 327132 – Chick Clinic, EG
ID 85306 – British Free Range Egg Producers Association, GB
ID 156279 – Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana, GH
ID 70763 – College of the Resurrection, GB
ID 202792 – Holy Cross University in Kielce, PL
ID 380798 – Primrose Library, GB
ID 321265 – Blossomwood Elementary School, USA
ID 295919 – Lamb County, USA
ID 190126 – White Rabbit Treatment Homes, CAN
ID 380821 – Bunny Hill Library, GB
ID 38812 – International Union for Conservation of Nature, CH