UKSG[1] is an international association that exists to connect the information community and encourage the exchange of ideas on scholarly communication.
The group's 500 member organizations include libraries, publishers, information suppliers, intermediaries and technology vendors. The group is a registered charity[2] led by a main committee of 18 elected volunteers who work in a variety of capacities within the scholarly communication industry.
UKSG works to facilitate discussion, stimulate research, support the professional development of its members and disseminate information about the scholarly communications sector. It runs an annual conference and regular seminars and training courses. It also supports an email discussion list, lis-e-resources: a forum in which members can exchange and discuss industry news and developments.
UKSG publishes the peer-reviewed journal Serials[3] (ISSN 0953-0460), containing the latest research in the field of scholarly communications and insights into the work of all those employed in the research information chain. It also provides members with a fortnightly email newsletter, Serials e-News, which provides up-to-the-minute news of current issues and developments within the global serials industry.
In 2006 UKSG commissioned a research report[4] that identified and described issues affecting the efficiency of OpenURL linking. One of the key issues identified was the exchange of metadata in the supply chain and the need for more common formats to aid the transfer of metadata from content providers to link resolver knowledge bases. As a result, in 2008 UKSG and NISO set up a joint initiative called Knowledge Bases and Related Tools[5] to make recommendations for the transfer of metadata. The first set of guidelines was published in January 2010 as a NISO Recommended Practice.[6]