The ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier) is an ISO code that uniquely identifies any duly registered person or organization that has contributed to an intellectual or artistic work.

The most obvious advantage of associating an ISNI to the contributors of your publications is to differentiate between homonyms, thus resolving the problem of name ambiguity in search and discovery, throughout the distribution chain.

Contributor database vs. ISNI uniqueness

In Cantook Hub, a database of contributors is associated with each publisher/distributor organization. Contributors are identified by several metadata (last name, first name, country, biography, etc.). The ISNI, which is always optional, is one of these metadata: its addition makes it possible to describe a contributor more precisely.

Each contributor in the database can be associated with one or more publications, each time with a specific contribution role (author, illustrator, narrator, etc.).

A contributor is first identified by his first and last name. We recommend selecting existing contributors, by their names, to avoid creating duplicates. But it remains possible to create multiple contributors with the same first and last names, each potentially with the same or a different ISNI. The platform does not require each ISNI to be unique.

ISNI Validity and Format

Only valid ISNIs are saved within the platform (any code received from an international agency will definitely be valid). An invalid or incorrectly formatted ISNI will raise a warning and be ignored.

A valid ISNI consists of 16 digits, the last of which may be replaced by the letter "X".

An ISNI can be entered into Cantook Hub either as 4 sets of 4 characters separated by a space, or as 16 consecutive characters.

At this time, no external official data source is used to validate the match between a name and its ISNI code (we will get to this in a later development phase). Cantook Hub therefore only validates the code itself, but no data associated with it.

Managing ISNI through the interface

The ISNI of contributors associated with a publication is displayed directly below their first and last names in the Metadata > Contributors section.

Adding the ISNI of a new contributor

The ISNI can be entered in the contributor's record when the contributor is directly added to a publication using Cantook Hub's New Contributor option.

Adding an ISNI to an existing contributor

The Contributors section, located in the publications list, allows you to manage all the contributors of an organization. You can associate an ISNI with an existing contributor simply by editing his or her record.

Importing the ISNI

The ISNI can be imported with ONIX 3, ONIX 2.1 and Dynamic Excel files.

A contributor must already be identified by a role and by first and last name before an ISNI can be associated with the him or her.

An ISNI that is declared in a metadata file that gets imported will replace the existing ISNI for a given contributor.

ONIX 3.0

See the tags described in sections P.7.6 and P.7.8 of the ONIX 3 documentation.

ONIX 2.1

See the tags described in sections PR.8.15 and PR.8.17 of the ONIX 3 documentation.

Dynamic Excel

The Contributor group contains columns describing the contributors (last name, first name, country, etc.). The following columns identify the ISNI of a contributor:

Transmitting ISNIs to resellers 

We will communicate ISNIs to resellers via ONIX 3.0 and 2.1 files.