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The ISSN or International Standard Serial Number identifies a serial publication, such as a newspaper, magazine, or academic journal, or blog; it is the periodical counterpart of the ISBN for a book. It does not identify a particular issue or a particular article in an issue. DOIs identify particular articles (but are mostly only available for academic journal articles). On Wikipedia, an ISSN is an optional part of a citation to a particular article (adding it never hurts, but it is not strictly necessary when a direct URL or DOI is provided to the full text of the article).
An ISSN is particularly helpful in the following circumstances (especially when the ISSN is linked, using template or parameter detailed below):