ISSN lookup by Journal Name

February 11, 2009 8:05 AM

Is there a website that I can use to scrape for ISSN numbers of academic journals? I have a big list of journals that I need the ISSN numbers for.

I'm also looking for a comprehensive list of social science journals (if there were a listing with ISSN numbers that would be double plus good)

posted by srboisvert to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Try going to a university's online library catalogue and searching for the journal title. Does this catalogue do what you need?
posted by angiep at 8:10 AM on February 11, 2009

You can use Worldcat to search by title - it's the compiled holdings of thousands of libraries, so it will be more comprehensive than searching an individual library's catalog.
posted by Siobhan at 8:13 AM on February 11, 2009

This might be easier to scrape, but not as comprehensive as a library catalog or worldcat.
posted by limon at 8:24 AM on February 11, 2009

(You can increase the view limit to get them all on one page)
posted by limon at 8:26 AM on February 11, 2009

For your second question, I'm thinking you might need access to a periodicals index/directory -- Ulrich's is the one with which I am most familiar, and I know that it allows you to browse titles by subject heading. I would contact some libraries in your area (public, or academic if you have access to one), and see whether they use Ulrich's. They would be able to run a search on your behalf, and it seems likely that they could produce a list that displays both title and ISSN.
posted by Siobhan at 8:27 AM on February 11, 2009

Do you get your journals through a subscription agent? If so, they can most likely send you a spreadsheet which includes a bunch of info for each title, including ISSN.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 8:39 AM on February 11, 2009

This is win: http://www.ebscohost.com/titleLists/hl-coverage.htm
posted by limon at 8:39 AM on February 11, 2009

(scraped it into a csv for you. click 'download'.)

Ok, I'm done. Sorry for answer spam.
posted by limon at 8:55 AM on February 11, 2009

I came here to recommend Ulrich's as well. If you live near a public university you should be able to use their databases on-site for free since it sounds like you need to run a lot of searches, which a reference librarian wouldn't be able to do for you like Siobhan suggests. Some public libraries will also subscribe to the electronic version of Ulrich's which you could use there or maybe even from home if they've licensed it that way. Ulrich's allows you to search by title, ISSN, and title keywords. I'm not sure if you could scrape the database but I've used it in what sounds like a similar project and entered the ISSN information by hand for nearly a thousand journals into spreadsheets. It wasn't so bad. That might be your best bet.
posted by k8lin at 9:31 AM on February 11, 2009

Thirding Ulrich's.

Another great thing about Ulrich's is that each journal record shows a history of previous incarnations of that particular title, as well as the associated ISSNs.

So if the journal you're looking for has been merged or superceded by another title, you can ascertain the ISSN for the period in which you're interested.

For example, the International Social Science Journal (ISSN 0020-8701) was, until 1959, the International Social Science Bulletin (ISSN 1014-5508).
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 1:09 PM on February 12, 2009