CDI: What is happening with the British Medical Journal indexing, availability and linking in CDI? 

There are multiple British Medical Journal (BMJ) titles with different ISSN identifiers that are contributed to the Central Discovery Index (CDI) via metadata feeds originating in multiple providers (including BMJ themselves).

We have article records with the following variations of the journal title:

• BMJ
• BMJ : British Medical Journal
• BMJ. British medical journal (Clinical research ed.),
• BMJ. British Medical Journal
• BMJ (Online)
• The British Medical Journal
• BMJ. British medical journal (International ed.)

These title variants are mostly associated with dedicated ISSNs, but it appears that sometimes the same ISSN is associated with a different journal title when contributed by a different provider.

For example, according to Ulrich’s, EISSN- 1468-5833 is associated with the BMJ. British medical journal (Clinical research ed.), yet in some providers’ feeds it appears in the article records with the journal title BMJ.

This is also true when the ISSNs have changed historically, for example for the journal title BMJ. British medical journal (Clinical research ed.), ISSN prior and including 1999 was 0959-8146, and 0959-8138 as of 2000. However, in some of the feeds we may have the article published in 2007 having ISSN set to 0959-8146 instead of the expected 0959-8138.

Such discrepancies affect merging of the records, availability status calculation and are causing additional issues.

BMJ is now introducing a new content delivery system to manage their content and metadata feeds. Their feeds are moving to the new platform - ScholarStor, developed and maintained by MPS.

We have reached out to the BMJ to ask for a clarification as to how the records they are supplying to us directly as well as via other suppliers can be standardized as far as the journal title, ISSN, eISSN and publication dates assignment.

This article will be updated as we have more information from BMJ.

• Article last edited: 18-Jul-2021