1. Getting technical: reference linking (or, “Well, I wouldn’t start from here…”) Tom Bishop Information Services Manager, The Royal College of Surgeons of England Library 3rd June, 2003 Getting technical

2. On the agenda (possibly)... Getting technical DOI CrossRef OpenURL SFX Balsa OPACs 1CATE SWALK Blink 182 P45 EIEIO

3. OK – “Com-pyoo-tur”… Getting technical

4. The key players How do we get access to journals and citations? Publishers – their own web sites and services Full text aggregators – Journals@Ovid, ProQuest, etc. ‘Hosts’ – SwetsWise, Ebscohost, HighWire, etc. ‘Secondary’ (A&I) databases – PubMed, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, etc. … and libraries! Getting technical

5. Reference linking: what do we mean? “The ability to go directly from a citation to the work cited” (Priscilla Caplan) Links among and between journal articles Links from bibliographic citations to journal articles Seamless, easy access allowing the user to link quickly and directly to any document they want Getting technical

7. …And you may ask yourself - “Well, how did I get here?” “Internal linking” Links contained within one service - e.g. from a reference in a full-text aggregator’s service to the text of an article held in the same service. “External linking” Takes the user out of a service to somewhere else - e.g. from a database to a publisher’s website, from one publisher’s website to another’s, etc. Getting technical

10. CrossRef External linking initially largely dependent on bilateral agreements. CrossRef is: “…a collaborative linking service” a membership network, not a product Getting technical

11. CrossRef Over 200 publishers registered Agents - HighWire, Ingenta Affiliates - Ebsco, TDNet, SwetsBlackwell Libraries 7.8 million content items registered across over 7000 journals How does it work? Getting technical

12. Take a step back… A link: http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/services/library ‘Static’ – link is computed in advance Not necessarily persistent - relates to a specific location defined at a specific time Getting a bit more technical

14. DOI: Digital Object Identifier A unique identifier assigned to a digital object. A way of accessing an object (e.g. a full text article) without having to know its URL - the DOI identifies the object itself, not the place where it is stored. Persistent - as long as the object exists, so does the DOI. Getting even more technical

15. DOI: Dumb Old Identifier “Dumb” number - doesn’t relate to the object, couldn’t be guessed - like a phone number. 10.1000/123456789 Getting even more technical Prefix - given to the rights owner e.g. the publisher Suffix - any unique alphanumeric string e.g. 10.1074/jbc.M004545200

16. CrossRef and DOI Publisher participating in CrossRef creates unique DOI for article. Associates it with: the articles’s metadata e.g. journal title/ISSN, vol., issue, pages, title, author, AND the URL where it resides. Submits all this to CrossRef for registration in a central directory. Getting even more technical

23. CrossRef and DOI: the benefits Participants can link in to the article by retrieving from CrossRef the DOI that links to it. Publishers can link outward from an article’s citations to any content registered by CrossRef. Single agreement rather than many bilateral ones. Drives up journal traffic. If the location of an article changes, all the publisher has to do is update the URL in the CrossRef directory. If the journal changes publisher, the DOI stays the same. Getting a bit less technical, hopefully

24. …But along comes the librarian with his bucket of cold water... Many articles do not have a DOI, and there are publishers not involved in the scheme. “With CrossRef it only takes a click or two to get to the full text, either as an authenticated user or through pay-per-view services.” The cat/pigeons slide Is this good enough??

25. Work versus manifestation A CrossRef DOI represents the work (the authoritative version of the article as published) itself, but not manifestations (different versions) of that work. e.g. the print/PDF/HTML versions may differ. Partly soluble in this example - publisher’s page to which the DOI for that article resolves can point to different versions. But then we hit… Getting a bit more technical again

26. The dictatorship of the publishariat Van der Sompel: “Dictated linking” ‘Target’ (i.e. where the user ends up) is dictated by the link provider. Ability to link and range of targets depends on the link provider’s collections or agreements. Bypasses the local environment - the link provider tells the user where to go, and the local institution cannot influence that. Why is this important? That’s not a real word, is it?

27. Getting even more technical

30. The issue of ‘appropriate copy’ CrossRef DOIs resolve to a publisher’s ‘response page’ - usually a full bibliographic citation, often an abstract, and a mechanism to get to the full text. But the user will usually be denied access to full text if they don’t have a personal or institutional subscription. Pay-per-view may be offered but… Getting a bit more technical again …the user may in fact be able to get hold of the article from a different source as a result of their library affiliation.

31. Appropriate sources and services Another database, aggregator or host to which the library subscribes The library’s print holdings Document delivery/ILL - the library’s own or a specific provider Solution = ‘Context-sensitive linking’ Also allows for ‘Extended services’ - internet search, link from OPAC book record to book review on the web, etc. Getting a bit more technical again

32. SFX (Ex Libris) First product to attempt to solve these problems. How does it work? Link source: the information resource where the user begins, e.g. a citation in a database or within an article, or a journal record in an OPAC. Link target: the information resource where the user ends up, e.g. publisher response page, TOC page, journal home page etc. Getting even more technical

33. Pretty technical

34. Getting even more technical

40. Hang on… … How does the link resolver ‘know’ about the article required? Rather than a static link to a particular target, the link source provides a ‘hook’ that gives information, in the form of metadata, about the article. When a user clicks the ‘SFX’ button, an OpenURL is created. Getting even more technical

42. OpenURL A way of transmitting metadata in a URL - essentially a transport system. http://LinkFinderPlus.library.edu?genre=article&issn=123456 78&volume=99&issue=1&date=20020101&spage=27&atitle= What Is An OpenURL&title=Harry's White Papers As technical as it gets ‘Base URL’: web address of the link resolver i.e. the address to which the Open URL is being sent ‘Query’: the metadata that the link resolver uses to identify and link to appropriate targets

43. OK, but… … How does the information resource provider in whose service the user has found the citation (e.g. database provider, journal publisher, host, OPAC, etc.) ‘know’ the affiliation of the user and therefore which link resolver to send the OpenURL to? OpenURL-aware sources (e.g. ScienceDirect, SwetsWise, Ovid databases) - link resolver address provided in institutional profile. Use of ‘cookie pushers’. Local solutions like IP recognition. As technical as it gets

44. OpenURL and CrossRef/DOI Complement each other when used in conjunction. http://LinkFinderPlus.library.edu?genre=article&issn=123456 78&volume=99&issue=1&date=20020101&spage=27&atitle= What Is An OpenURL&title=Harry's White Papers&id=doi:123/456789 Link resolver can point the user to a persistent object as an appropriate copy. DOI is attached to metadata in the CrossRef database – no need to update a local link resolver if things change. As technical as it gets

45. Everybody’s doing it… LinkFinderPlus (Endeavor) 1CATE (Openly Informatics) WebBridge (Innovative) LinkSource (Ebsco) Linksolver (Ovid) Balsa (EDINA) Getting less technical again

46. Open URLs and context-sensitive resolution - a good example Andy Powell OpenResolver: a simple OpenURL resolver. Article http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue28/resolver/ Walkthrough http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/distributed- systems/openurl/ Getting less technical again

47. The benefits... Appropriate copy and extended services - decided at a local level to maximise usage. Better user interface - users look for SFX (or whatever) button wherever they are, cuts out wild goose chases. Links aren’t computed until the user clicks – dynamic “just-in-time” linking reduces response times. ‘Political’ - puts the library at the centre of searching and retrieval. Not too technical

48. …and the costs? Financial - dependent on product and institution Time and effort “The SFX services… are only as good as the information provided by the librarian. The more detailed the information, the better the level of granularity for linking.” (Jenny Walker, SFX) “An OpenURL resolver is never better than the knowledge base behind it.” (Eric Hellman, Openly) Not too technical

49. Future developments National or centralised resolvers? Multiple resolution of DOI Technical for the last time “I believe OpenURL resolution is going to become as obvious a necessity for navigating through and across databases as online catalogs were for libraries in the 80's.” (Chuck Hamaker, UNCC)

50. Thank you. (Brought to you by the letters D, O and I and the number 10.1000/123456789) That’s all, folks