Edward Pentz

Executive Director

CrossRef Update 2001

October 10th, 2001

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What does CrossRef do?• Uses DOI system to make linking to full

text scholarly journal articles efficient, manageable, and reliable– Links are between online journals, from

secondary database records and from library pages

– Outbound links: add end-user utility to content– Inbound links: bring more users to content

– Mission: to be the complete citation linking backbone for all scholarly literature in electronic form

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Who is CrossRef?

• CrossRef is a collaborative, non-profit, independent membership organization that employs open standards

• Members: Any publisher of original scholarly material in electronic form

• Libraries: Enrich online catalogues with outgoing links to full text, and increase use of digital archives with incoming links.

• Affiliates and agents: Secondary publishers and journal hosting services are enhancing their products with DOI-based citation links.

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Is it working?

YES!• More than 80% of the publishers are currently

depositing and a growing number retrieving• More than 5,000 journals in the system• Over 3.5 million articles registered• 968,576 DOI resolutions in July • 83 member publishers, and 20 library or other

affiliates• 500,000 – 1 million articles per year

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Why is it Working?

• Community of interest w/defined goals• Legal framework (Trust)

– Non-profit corporation – structure and process– Membership Agreement – Rules and guidelines

• Business Model (Fairness/Cost Recovery)– Loans to get started – Transaction fees ( No charge to end users)

• 80% members (mostly deposit), 20% non-members

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Rules

• A member must deposit all their online content

• A member cannot retrieve DOIs unless they are depositing content on a regular basis– Articles from a journal are to be deposited

before DOIs for references from those articles can be retrieved

• Affirmative obligation to link – quid pro quo

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Rules

• DOIs can be cached (retrieval fee is one-time

lookup fee) – encourage DOIs everywhere

• DOIs must resolve to a response page with complete bibliographic information. Access to abstracts and full text is controlled by publishers

• The copyright owner of a journal has the sole authority to designate resolution URL  

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Standards and Infrastructure

• IDF framework– Technical: Handle System and CNRI– Basic Policy: DOI Syntax/ work vs.

manifestation– Metadata – indecs– DOI-X sponsorship

• Enabled rapid start up• RAWG – escrow, software licenses,

contingency plans

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What are the benefits?

• For publishers• Improved services to authors, readers and

library customers• Simple reciprocal access• Elimination of need for multitude of

individual bilateral arrangements• Persistence of in-bound and out-bound links• Tool to create other added-value services

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What are the benefits?

• Researchers

• Seamless access across various publisher platforms

• For authors, outbound-linking adds value to the article and inbound-linking increases readership and citations

• Improved efficiency in the research process

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What are the benefits?

• For libraries

• Increased value from electronic subscriptions (inward and outward links)

• Ability to enrich locally-mounted databases with full text links

• Improved patron efficiency and satisfaction

• Addresses the “appropriate copy” problem

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Next Steps

• Expansion of content types– conference proceedings and reference works– enable citation linking and drive traffic to, and

sales of, proceedings papers and book chapters.

• Parameter Passing– a key is sent along with a DOI link (e.g., “Journal

X sent me here”)

– (1) track originating journal (2) customize response pages (3) add return buttons, (4) institute special trading rules

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Multiple resolution

• What: A single DOI associated with many possible actions

• What for: Could include (1) multiple URLs for dispersed mirror sites, (2) pointer to a metadata record, (3) access to sub-parts of an article, such as abstract or references only, (4) email address, (5) different versions (“get html” or “get pdf”), (5) author bio, (6) rights information, etc…

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Multiple Resolution for Journals and Conference Proceedings

APPROPRIATE COPY PROBLEM:WHICH URL?

DOI ResolverDOI

URL?

Sciencedirect.com?

Ohiolink.edu?

Utoronto.ca? LANL.gov

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OpenURL Terminology

• OpenURL framework - a concept and architecture for linking, enabling context-sensitive, or localized, resolution of links

• OpenURL - a syntax for transporting metadata and identifiers within URLs

• SFX – a commercial implementation by Ex Libris of a local linking server using the OpenURL framework

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OpenURL aware

References

DOI Proxy Server

DOI link

DOI

OpenURL

Metadata

DOI Handle ServerDOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/toxsci/57.1.95

LANL LinkSeeker

(Local Service)

AppropriateLinks

OpenURL model for Alternative/Local resolution of CrossRef/DOI

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the central source for reference linking

don’t be the missing link

http://www.crossref.org

Ed Pentz

epentz@crossref.org