[Discuss-DOI] Re: [Ref-Links] DOIs used for reference linking

[Mark Doyle <doyle@aps.org>]

Greetings,

I first sent this reply to the Ref-Links mailing list, but I see this forum  
is much more active, so I am resending my (partially amended) comments  
here.

My view towards citing and reference linking is distinctly pragmatic (as will
be amply clear from what follows). The main problem that I have with using
DOIs as the basis for citing and linking references to scholarly journal
articles is that it needlessly tries to throw away the current scheme, a
scheme that has been in use for hundreds of years and has proven robust and
stable. Namely, an article (I am going to attempt to use the terms as defined
in the proposal) is cited by a subset of the (usually hierarchial) metadata
that derives from the peer-review process. For instance, Physical Review
articles are cited by (author, journal, volume, page, year). Conspicuously
absent are the issue number, title, ISSN, coden, PII, etc.

I believe the DOI proposal for reference linking errs when it regards this
subset of metadata as only applicable to a physical manifestation of the
work. It is, of course, true that such citations are tied to the printed
book, but they work perfectly well as a way to access an electronic
manifestation of the articles, especially when a "wrapper" is created that
supplies links to all of the alternative electronic manifestations
(availibility of which may vary with time). One does face the problem of
how to identify articles independently of the papyrocentric pagination.
This we have solved pragmatically by generalizing the page number to
a six digit "electronic identifier" that is used, for example, in Physical  
Review D (http://prd.aps.org/).

This number looks like a page number for the most part, but it works for
both the printed book (if it is even produced) and the online version. In
particular, the identifiers have modest intelligence built in so that the
article can be found on a library book shelf just as easily as if a page
number were given, i.e., the numerical ordering of the identifiers matches
the editorially supplied table of contents ordering, even though the
latter doesn't fully exist until an issue is completed. In a purely online
journal, an "issue" would just be a collection of articles published
during a convenient time period. Researchers, libraries, A&I services, and
other databases have been able to immediately integrate the electronic
identifier into what they do because it is transparently akin to a page
number.

The APS link manager (http://publish.aps.org/linkfaq.html) provides an
interface that is built upon the metadata subset used to cite the articles we
publish. In particular, the construction of the URL can be accomplished by
plugging in the metadata to a simple template. No lookups are required. The
simple generalization of the page number and the simple link interface (which
takes one to the wrapper for the article) elevates the traditional citation
from one for the physical manifestation to one for the Work itself. This is
no small point - the whole point of the peer-review process is to attach a
name to a Work that conveys quality assurance as well as "brand" (the value
added to an article derived from being part of a larger collection of
similarly selected articles).

The proposal calls for recommending DOIs as "the declared identifier in a
citation" and for DOIs to remain "dumb". This I think will not work. I do
not believe that researchers will be willing to use long, dumb identifiers
directly in their citations, especially when there are simpler schemes
that will suffice. During the transition period when publishers will have
both digital and physical manifestations, I do not think it wise to
introduce multiple citations for a single work. Some publishers (at least
one in physics) adopted the DOI for articles that are published online
before they are printed. When an article is printed, a second citation
is produced. Researchers will thus cite the article in multiple ways,
making it harder to track and locate the article in its different
manifestations.

The other ingredient that is missing from the DOI proposal is an explicit
interface for accessing the database via the metadata. By far the most
important way of interfacing with the database is going to be querying the
database to get a DOI (and ultimately the URL) associated with the
(traditionally cited subset of) metadata. This interface will have to be
standardized and robust.  With such an interface in place though, one must
pause and wonder what the addition of the DOI brings to the table. If the
query can be based on the metadata, why not leave it at that?

Finally (this e-mail is longer than I intended), one should carefully
think about the error handling that is possible when a link is being
resolved. If someone makes a mistake in the metadata (transposes some
digits in a page number or a DOI for example), where does that leave the
person attempting to follow the link? A solution like the APS link manager
is tightly integrated with our definitive manuscript database and this can
be used to the fullest to assist the user in resolving the error. At
worst, the user has found herself at the appropriate site and can follow
links to suitable search engines or tables of contents to locate the
wrongly cited article. A centralized server will need to work harder
to get the user moving on the correct path again.

So, from my pragmatic point of view, publishers can straightfowardly
generalize traditional (journal, volume, page) cites into an identifier
for the work and not just a particular manifestation and supply stable and
robust linking based upon this extension. A project like Eric Hellman's
SLinkS would provide a lighter weight centralized way of finding a
particular publishers URL template that can be used in simple algorithmic
constructions of stable and robust URLs based upon traditional citation
metadata (it is my belief that all publishers will have to supply such an
interface anyway). DOIs will surely find use in other spheres, but in the
limited domain of scholarly journal citations, I think there is a
fundamental mismatch between the generality of the DOI and the problem
domain.

Well, thanks for reading this far. The form of the solutions publishers
choose will have a great impact on the ease of adding the hyperlinking for
which the scholarly literature is so naturally suited.  So far, it has
been our experience that simple interfaces based upon the commonly used
metadata have been the easiest to accomodate and result in the rapid
spread of linking.

Regards,
Mark Doyle
The American Physical Society - Electronic publishing R&D
doyle@aps.org

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