ISSN Barcode Introduction

The International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) was developed by the International Standards Organization (ISO) to identify an electronic or print periodical publication. A periodical with the two forms may have two ISSNs, a print ISSN (p-ISSN) and an electronic ISSN (e-ISSN). An ISSN barcode can encode 2 blocks of 4 numbers separated by a hyphen, and a 2-digit or 5-digit add-on symbols can be appended for supplementary information.

Encodable Chars	ISSN can encode numeric digits though 0 to 9, except for the check digit, which may be an upper-case X.
Checksum Digit	A module 11 checksum digit is compulsory to an ISSN barcode symbology, which will be automatically calculated by the ISSN generator. An upper case X is used to indicate a check digit of 10, otherwise it is numeric.
Components	3 digits: The ISSN barcode uses the coding scheme of EAN-13, with the first three digits 977 prefixed; (automatically added) 7 digits: the ISSN number of periodical; 2 digits: variants (default value is usually « 0 » ) to indicate a price change; 1 digit: the modulo 10 check digit, which will likely be different from the ISSN check digit printed above the ISSN symbol. (automatically computed)
Add-on Symbols	A two-digit or five-digit add-on symbol can be added to encode supplementary information, like issue number for a magazine.

 

Quiet Zone	Guard Bar Pattern	Data Chars	Center Guard Bar Pattern	Data Chars	Guard Bar Pattern	Quiet Zone
1	2	3	4	5	6	7

To set the size of ISSN, two things are of importance, i.e. the X Dimension and the barcode width.