Publisher Item Identifier Explained

The Publisher Item Identifier (PII) is a unique identifier used by a number of scientific journal publishers to identify documents.^[1] It uses the pre-existing ISSN or ISBN of the publication in question, and adds a character for source publication type, an item number, and a check digit.

The system was adopted in 1996 by the American Chemical Society, theAmerican Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society,Elsevier Science, and the IEEE.

Format

A PII (pii) is a 17-character string, consisting of:

• one character to indicate source publication type: "S" = serial with ISSN, "B" = book with ISBN
• ISSN (8 digits) or ISBN (10 characters) of the serial or book to which the publication item is primarily assigned
• in the case of serials an additional two digit number to pad the difference between the 8-digit ISSN and an ISBN (suggested are the last two digits of calendar year of the date of assignment, which is not necessarily identical to the cover date)
• a 5-digit number assigned by the publisher that is unique to the publication item within the serial or book
• a check digit (0-9 or X)

When a PII is printed (as opposed to stored in a database), the 17-character string may be extended with punctuation characters to make it more readable to humans, as in Sxxxx-xxxx(yy)iiiii-d or Bx-xxx-xxxxx-x/iiiii-d.

Example

• 10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.037 . 22169532 . . 0960-9822 . The Single-Molecule Mechanics of the Latent TGF-β1 Complex . Current Biology . 21 . 24 . 2046–2054 . 2011 . Buscemi . Lara . Ramonet . David . Klingberg . Franco . Formey . Aurélie . Smith-Clerc . Josiane . Meister . Jean-Jacques . Hinz . Boris. free .

See also

• Serial Item and Contribution Identifier (SICI)
• Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
• OpenURL

External links

• Document identifiers: an update on current activities . https://web.archive.org/web/20021118041502/http://www.icsti.org/forum/23/index.html#identifiers . 2002-11-18 . Norman Paskin . Quarterly Newsletter of the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information. 23 . September 1996.

Notes and References

1. Web site: Publisher Item Identifier as a means of document identification . Elsevier . 9 April 1998 . https://web.archive.org/web/20031013073003/http://www.elsevier.nl/inca/homepage/about/pii/ . 2003-10-13 .