ISNI Registration Agency
What is an ISNI?
The International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) is an ISO standard (ISO 27729) that identifies public identities of individuals and organizations. The ISNI is not intended to provide direct access to comprehensive information about a “Public Identity” – instead, it is designed to act as a ‘bridge identifier’ to link systems where comprehensive information is held, such as Ringgold’s Identify Database.
ISNI is an open identifier in that it may be freely shared with any other person or party without restriction. In this way, ISNI provides a ‘bridge’ between any public or proprietary dataset where the ISNI has been incorporated. An ISNI number consists of 16 numerical digits. Example: 1234 1234 1234 1234.
For more information about ISNI and the ISNI International Authority, please visit https://isni.org/
Ringgold: an ISNI Registration Agency for organizations
Ringgold became the first ISNI Registration Agency for organizations in May 2012 and has participated in the standardization of organizational identifiers since 2005. Ringgold has been working with ISNI over the last three years to improve and standardize the assignment of ISNI numbers for organizations. Ringgold is now pleased to be able to release ISNIs to all Identify customers and to the general public.
The Identify Database now includes over 600,000 ISNI numbers for organizations, representing 99.9% coverage. As new records are added to Identify, Ringgold will obtain new ISNI numbers from the ISNI Assignment Agency automatically.
How to find the ISNI number for your organization
If you hold a licence for the Identify Database, or are an Identify Audit Service customer, then you will see a field against each organizational record that includes the ISNI number for that record.
If you are not a Ringgold customer but would like to find the ISNI number for an organization then you can look this up for free at https://isni.ringgold.com/.
Open ISNI for Organizations is a Ringgold service that provides ISNIs (International Standard Name Identifier) for organizations worldwide. This includes:
- An API to obtain and resolve existing ISNIs for organizations
- A free online look-up service to search and obtain ISNI records
We hope this will facilitate the use of ISNIs throughout our community as an open bridge identifier across a myriad of use cases.
>> For more information and access to the free service please see: https://isni.ringgold.com/
Alternatively, you can search for the organization on the ISNI website https://isni.org/page/search-database/
If you can’t find the ISNI number for your organization
As a registration agency, Ringgold provides organizations within the scholarly publishing industry with properly registered ISNI numbers. If you need to register a new ISNI for your organization, please get in touch with us at isni@ringgold.com. A charge may be made for this service.
If you need an ISNI for an individual, artist, or band
If you need to register an ISNI for an entity which is outside the scholarly publishing industry, or for an artiste, please contact one of the other ISNI registration agencies listed here for assistance: https://isni.org/page/isni-registration-agencies/
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this service please contact us at isni@ringgold.com