Journals often change titles over the course of many years of publication. GOKb aims to provide information about each title that's occurred during a journal's lifespan. (This group is often known as a title family.) Many providers, however, don't include complete title history information as part of their title lists. Some providers may list only the current iteration of each title. Others may list some earlier titles, but often this information is incomplete or incorrect.

GOKb data managers should work toward including complete title history information for each package that's added to the system. However, compiling and entering this information can be very time consuming. So it's not expected at this stage that all title lists will include complete title history information. Depending on the length of your list and the quality of information available, you may wish to add this information during the OpenRefine stage or later on using the GOKb web interface. This tutorial will tell you how to add title history details to a title list before loading it into GOKb. (See pages on adding new TIPPs and adding publication history details for more information on how to work on this process in GOKb.)

Also note that at this stage OpenRefine can only be used to add previous titles to GOKb. It cannot be used to create title history events and linkages between earlier and later titles. This work must be done in the GOKb web application: Tutorial: Add Title History Details Post-Ingest.

Steps

Step 1: Evaluate title history needs

• Check GOKb or the provider documentation page to see if title history information has been loaded in the past. If complete title history work has been done before, it will not need to be repeated every time you update a package. Even if the updated list you're working with doesn't include title histories, GOKb will retain any earlier titles that were added during previous loads.
• Evaluate your title list to determine whether title history information needs to be added.
• If title history is needed, make a judgement about whether it's feasible to do this work before loading data into OpenRefine.

Step 2: Put your data into Excel

• It's highly recommended that you put your data in Excel before doing extensive title history work. OpenRefine is not designed for data entry, and the process will be very slow and cumbersome if you attempt to add titles there.
• If you are starting on title history work before loading your project into OpenRefine, you can simply open the title list in Excel, work on title histories there, and import the project to OpenRefine when you're done.
• If you've already done some work in OpenRefine, you can export your project back to Excel, work on title histories there, and then reimport it to OpenRefine.

Step 3: Add title history entries to your title list

• For each title you're working on, use a reliable source to identify any previous titles used and the years of activity for each.
• Helpful sources for finding this information include:
  • The provider's site and its sites for individual journal titles
  • ISSN Portal (subscription required)
  • Ulrich's (subscription required)
  • xISSN title history visualization tool
  • WorldCat
• For each earlier title not already contained on your title list, create a new row in Excel and populate each field with the appropriate data.
• Some files using the KBART phase 2 format may include a "Previous title ID" column. If this is present, you can add it to GOKb as a custom field by using the column name "gokb.ti.preceding_publication_title_id."
• Note that you will need to adjust the coverage dates for each title in the title family to correspond to the correct years of publication, as well as the coverage offered by the package. This will likely involve editing the coverage dates for the current title too.

Example

Original entry:

With title history added:

Note that this title family has additional history dating before 1969. But since Sage does not host this content as part of its package, that coverage isn't included here.

Next step

GOKb Data Ingest Using OpenRefine