From: Giselle Rawlins <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:57:31 +0000

For immediate release

12th March 2013 – Beaverton, OR, USA. Ringgold’s New Subject Taxonomy Now
Published and being considered by COUNTER for the Journal Usage Factor.

Ringgold Inc (www.ringgold.com) is proud to announce the publication of its
new subject taxonomy, Ringgold Subjects, and it is being considered for
adoption by COUNTER for use in classifying journals for the Journal Usage
Factor (JUF).

Ringgold has engaged with its customers to develop a suitable and granular
subject taxonomy to classify the subject interests of institutions over the
last year. It undertook detailed research and a lengthy consultation process
with publishers, which resulted in a widely accepted subject taxonomy that
meets publishers' needs in mapping their content to the subject interests of
institutions.

COUNTER has been developing the Journal Usage Factor
(www.projectcounter.org/usage_factor.html) since 2007 in consultation with a
large number of industry leaders, and with publishers participating in a
number of project phases. The draft code of compliance for the JUF is
available on the COUNTER website for the purpose of public consultation:
www.projectcounter.org/documents/Draft_UF_R1.pdf.

Peter Shepherd, COUNTER Director, said "We have explored a number of subject
taxonomies for the classification of journals within the JUF and have found
Ringgold’s Subjects to be the best fit, with the most international
approach, widest coverage and least geographical bias".

Ringgold will be applying the Ringgold Subjects to its institutional
database of over 350,000 institutional entities, by assessing their
products, services, research interests and departmental structure. This is
part of a larger re-classification of Ringgold’s Identify database that will
be rolled out in phases over the next two years. The subject element of the
re-classification has been published on the Ringgold website and is openly
available for use by all: www.ringgold.com/pages/subjects.html.

For further information please contact [log in to unmask]

About Ringgold

Ringgold has created a process for the identification of institutions and
the relationships between organisations. Each institutional entity has been
assigned its own unique Ringgold ID, which is mapped to the organisational
hierarchy and a range of classification metadata, including consortium
membership. Ringgold provides two main services, Identify – a database of
over 350,000 organisations with Ringgold IDs and associated metadata, and
Consortium Directory Online – a directory of over 400 library consortia
world-wide which license online content, fully profiled for analysis and
information regarding licensing and contacts. More than 60 publishers
currently use Ringgold's databases and its related services to organise and
manage their customer data more effectively.