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DATE: June 11, 2026
REVISED:
NAME: Broadening Field 542 to Record Intellectual Property Disputes in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
SOURCE: ISSN International Centre; ISSN Review Group
SUMMARY: This paper proposes broadening the scope of field 542 (Information Relating to Copyright Status) to explicitly permit recording information concerning intellectual property disputes relating to the ownership or control of a continuing resource title.
KEYWORDS: Field 542 (BD); Information Relating to Copyright Status (BD); Copyright status (BD); Copyright facts (BD); Copyright litigation (BD); Publishers (BD); Imprints (BD)
RELATED: 2006-DP04 ; 2007-DP05; 2008-02
STATUS/COMMENTS:
06/11/26 – Made available to the MARC community for discussion.
Field 542 (Information Relating to Copyright Status) in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format is currently defined as a field containing information related to the copyright status of a resource. The ISSN International Centre and ISSN National Centres increasingly encounter situations in which the ownership or intellectual property rights associated with a continuing resource title are disputed between multiple publishers.
Such disputes may affect cataloging decisions, ISSN assignment practices, publisher identification, and the interpretation of bibliographic history. At present, MARC 21 does not provide a clearly designated mechanism for recording concise information indicating that a title is the subject of an ongoing intellectual property dispute.
The ISSN International Centre assumes that field 542 provides an appropriate location for recording this type of information because the field already addresses rights-related and copyright-related information associated with bibliographic resources.
Field 542 is currently defined in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format as follows:
Field Definition and Scope:
Information known about the item that may be used to determine copyright status.
The entire field may be repeated if a non-repeatable subfield needs to be repeated (e.g., Personal creator, Research date) or if additional information is added at a later date.
Although field 540 (Terms governing use and reproduction note) may include some data about copyright information, this field has more detailed information and specific subfield coding that allow for manipulation of the data.
Field 542 includes the repeatable subfield $n (Note), which is suitable for recording explanatory information relating to rights status. It also contains the subfields $o (Research date) and $s (Source of information), which could be used to record additional details about the intellectual property situation. The ISSN International Centre is proposing to broaden the scope of Field 542 to explicitly permit the recording of information relating to intellectual property disputes concerning the ownership or control of a title.
No new subfields would be required.
This proposal enhances semantic consistency by allocating rights-related disputes to a field already dedicated to intellectual property information. It also facilitates the exchange of data between libraries, ISSN centres and metadata agencies. It provides better support for the management of continuing resources and bibliographic history. There is minimal implementation impact as no new coding structures are required.
In field 542 (Information Relating to Copyright Status) of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format, revise the definition and scope to clarify that the field may also contain information relating to intellectual property disputes concerning the ownership or control of a resource title.
Current wording:
"Information known about the item that may be used to determine copyright status."
Proposed wording:
"Information relating to the copyright status or other intellectual property matters associated with a resource, including disputes concerning ownership or control of a title."
NOTE: These examples are based on ISSN Portal records.
Example 1:
022 0# $a0030-400X $0http://issn.org/resource/ISSN/0030-400X#ISSN $1http://issn.org/resource/ISSN/0030-400X $2 76
023 0# $a0030-400X $0 http://issn.org/resource/ISSN-L/0030-400X#ISSN-L $1 http://issn.org/resource/ISSN-L/0030-400X $2 0
222 #0 $a Optics and spectroscopy $b (Print)
264 #1 $a Saint Petersburg :$b Ioffe Institute $c 2023-
264 31 $3 <2025- >: $a [Tortola, British Virgin Islands] :$b Pleiades Publishing
542 ## $n The intellectual property of this title is the subject of a dispute between several publishers $o 19 January 2023 $s Information provided by Pleiades
Example 2:
022 0# $a 2069-6086 $0 http://issn.org/resource/ISSN/2069-6086#ISSN $1 http://issn.org/resource/ISSN/2069-6086 $2 26
023 0# $a 1843-0791 $0 http://issn.org/resource/ISSN/2069-6086#ISSN $1 http://issn.org/resource/ISSN/2069-6086 $2 0
222 #0 $a Romanian journal of rheumatology $b (Online)
264 #1 $a Bucureşti :$b Amaltea $c 2006-
264 31 $3 2026- : $a Craiova : $b Editura Medicală Universitară
542 ## $n The intellectual property of this title is the subject of a dispute between several publishers $o April 2024 $s Information provided by one of the publishers involved
At this time, MARC field 542 is not converted from MARC to BIBFRAME, but this decision could be revised if necessary.
In RDA, MARC 542 $n is currently mapped to the "note on copyright date" element in Official RDA. However, this element is soft-deprecated and may be fully deprecated in the near future. Currently, it is recommended that catalogers record information that would go in 542 $n in the RDA "note on manifestation" element. Once the "note on copyright date" element has been fully deprecated, catalogers will have to record the information in the "note on manifestation" element, an element that is mapped to MARC Field 500.
6.1. Is field 542 an appropriate location for recording information concerning intellectual property disputes related to continuing resource titles?
6.2. Is it sufficient to provide this new information in a note?
6.3. Would it help to add an indicator to the field to denote what follows is intellectual property information rather than Copyright information?
6.4. Is the proposed broadening of the field definition sufficiently clear?
6.5. Should the publisher or publishers in the dispute be listed in $k? Should the privacy indicator be used in this case?
6.6. Is adding a note field to field 264 a better solution since the information pertains to the publisher?
6.7. Would a general 500 note or a local note be preferable?
6.8. Would the MARC community prefer a more structured approach for recording rights disputes?
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