[Ref-Links] DOIs used for reference linking: comments to Mark Doyle

[Herbert Van de Sompel <hvds@lanl.gov>]

I would like to add to the issues raised by Mark Doyle (Mar 24th), since I
seem to share the preference for a pragmatic framework with Mark, when it
comes to reference linking.

The introduction of the DOI as a mechanism for reference linking adds some
extra problems, not raised by Mark:

- if the link-source doesn't have the DOI (which would occur a lot in a
transitional period), one could try to do a lookup in the DOI base using the
traditional keys from the link-source (as Mark mentions), but there would be
no guarantee for success (the "work" itself might not be DOI-ed).  so in that
case one must rely on "pragmatic" solutions anyhow
- if the link-source has the DOI, the resolution of it will be done at the
level of the browser (or may be a proxy) but out of reach of an intermediate
(such as a library) that might want to present extra services for the
link-source.  this is what the DOI group started to call the Harvard problem.
it is not a straightforward issue to solve in the DOI mindframe.  Marks's
pragmatic linking work for citations in APS papers + my SFX service
illustrates how this local resolution is a non-issue in a pragmatic framework.

--
Herbert Van de Sompel
Head of Library Automation - University of Ghent - Belgium
Research Assistant - Research Library Los Alamos National Laboratorium
tel (505)-667-9233

Objects on mirror sites are closer than they appear.



------------------------------------------------------
Ref-Links maillist  -  Ref-Links@doi.org
http://www.doi.org/mailman/listinfo/ref-links