At 18:20 25/09/1995 EST, Dr. Dieter Ebner wrote:
>Where could I get an electronic list of (almost) all journals
>(periodicals) together with their official abbreviations?

The ISSN International Centre is engaged in an activity which is
complementary to its fundamental mission, which is the assignment of ISSN
for serial identification. Serials can also be identified through the
"abbreviated key title" which is a fundamental element of the ISSN record,
together with the ISSN and the key title.

The abbreviated key title, as its name shows, is a form of the key title
where all possible words are abbreviated. This kind of title is frequently
used in references concerning scientific and technical publications and is
considered as fundamental data by numerous current awareness and abstracting
and indexing services.

It was hence logical that the ISSN International Centre be designated by ISO
(International Standards Organization) as the maintenance agency of the ISO
4 standard (Information and Documentation - Rules for the abbreviation of
words in serial titles and of serial titles). The Centre maintains and
publishes the List of Serial Title Word Abbreviations (LSTWA).

The List is fed with titles of serials which are included in the ISSN
register and contains (in 1995) some 48,000 words in 60 different languages.

The List of Serial Title Word Abbreviations is published on three different
media : a printed edition with annual supplements, an annual edition on
floppy disk and a quarterly updated version published on ISSN Compact, the
ISSN Register on CD-ROM.

The ISSN Register itself contains the abbreviated key titles for more than
550,000 serial titles (out of some 740,000 ISSN records).

Pierre Godefroy
Assistant to the Director
ISSN International Centre

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Centre international de l'ISSN
ISSN International Centre
20 rue Bachaumont
75002 PARIS (FRANCE)
tel : (33 1)44 88 22 20
fax : (33 1)40 26 32 43
E-mail : issnic@well.com
Information sur l'ISSN / Information on ISSN (World Wide Web) :
http://www.issn.uio.no/issn (site in Norway)
http://www.well.com/user/issnic (site in the United States - California)
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