National bibliographic data for studies of social sciences and humanities: towards interoperability

National bibliographic data bring numerous opportunities for science studies, especially when integrating data from multiple data sources. The use of multiple data sources, however, is hindered by the lack of interoperability. Although progress has been made in developing persistent international identifiers such as ISBN, DOI, and GRID, the interoperability between different data sources still poses challenges at several levels. We reflect upon these challenges with a focus on conceptual and methodological aspects with respect to the Academic Book Publisher Register (ABP), a comprehensive international list of publishers that is created by integrating multiple publisher lists used in different countries. This register, currently in development, is primarily meant to be used in research evaluation settings. At the same time it is potentially a valuable source of data for studies focused on publishing in different knowledge domains. In discussing the challenges encountered while making the ABP, we focus on two main issues: delineation of publishers and establishing connection between local lists and the ABP. In this paper we discuss possible ways to overcome these obstacles and draw conclusions in relation to other data sources that can be of use in research within the social sciences and humanities.