ISO 4

ISO 4 is an international standard which defines a uniform system for the abbreviation of serial titles, i.e., titles of publications such as scientific journals. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has appointed the International Centre for the Registration of Serial Publications (CIEPS) as the registration authority for ISO 4. It maintains the List of Title Word Abbreviations (LTWA), which contains standard abbreviations for words commonly found in serial titles.

Overview

ISO 4 is primarily used in the library and information science community and is part of a family of standards related to the presentation of bibliographic references and citations. The standard is designed to simplify the citation of serials in bibliographies, catalogues, and databases, and to facilitate the exchange of bibliographic information between different systems and languages.

The standard specifies the use of abbreviations for words in the titles of serials, based on the LTWA. The LTWA includes more than 56,000 words and their corresponding abbreviations in 65 languages.

Application

The application of ISO 4 ensures that titles of serials are consistently cited in multiple languages, which is particularly important for the accurate identification of serial publications in databases and libraries. The standard is widely used in scientific databases such as PubMed and Scopus, and in library catalogues.

The LTWA includes a list of words and their corresponding abbreviations. The list is not exhaustive, and it is updated periodically to include new words and languages. The abbreviations are based on a system that takes into account the linguistic and grammatical characteristics of each language.

See also

• List of ISO standards
• International Organization for Standardization
• International Centre for the Registration of Serial Publications
• Library and information science
• Bibliographic citation