PIRA International have recently announced a new service, free for at least a trial period, that helps smaller serial publishers to produce article headers that are correctly coded according to the SSSH DTD.
SSSH - Simplified SGML for Serial Headers - was developed last year on behalf of Book Industry Communications, the standards body of the UK book and serials publishing industry. SSSH has much in common with its respected antecedent, MAJOUR, but reduces the number of required elements, in accordance with the recommendations of the OASIS group of UK serials publishers, and adds new elements for the article identification schemes (SICI and PII) that have been developed since MAJOUR was published in 1991.
The success of any standard can be judged directly from its level of adoption in the market. It is too early to say whether SSSH will be a success, but the new service aims to improve its chances. All that a small publisher needs in order to generate an SGML-coded article header (for electronic delivery to current awareness and document delivery services) is a PC with Internet access and a Web browser. On connection to the SSSH Web site (http://www.pira.co.uk/sssh), the user has access to a series of forms for online entry of header details, from which an SGML-coded article header is constructed and validated (using James Clark's nsgmls) by the Web server and delivered back to the user's PC.
For further information contact the SSSH Web site, which provides detailed information on SSSH, including the current version of the DTD and reference documentation, or contact Francis Cave at:
PIRA International
Leatherhead
Randalls Road
Surrey KT22 7RU
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 1372 802213
Fax: +44 (0) 1372 802238
Email: cave@pira.co.uk [Francis Cave]
Contact Robin Cover with corrections and updates, or to submit contributions to the ISUG online document database.
