International Standard Text Code

The International Standard Text Code (ISTC) is a unique identifier for text-based works. The ISO standard was developed by TC 46/SC 9 and published in March 2009 as ISO 21047:2009. The authority responsible for implementing the standard is The International ISTC Agency.

Purpose

By including one or more ISTC numbers as an attribute of a bibliographic record (e.g., an ISBN record), the aggregation, collocation, filtering, etc. of publication records can be achieved automatically based on the content of the relevant publications. This solves the problem of identifying the relevant content when it is published under different titles, or where different content is published under the same title. The ISTC also enables many improvements in efficiency, such as enabling retail websites to accurately re-use reviews and subject classifications applied to one publication on every other publication of the same work.

Another application of ISTCs involves using them to identify distinct but related works. E.g., the bibliographic records for a number of derivations, such as translations of the same work, can include the ISTC for that original work and thus be automatically grouped together, even though the records are for publications of distinct works with their own individual titles.

ISTC

ISTC may refer to: