[Ref-Links] DOIs used for reference linking (additional comment to Ed & Mark)

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

I start to enjoy this discussion.  I think Mark's replies to Ed's comments are
very accurate.  I would like to add just one small thing to make the picture
more complete.  My remarks add to how the "distributed algorithmic linking
proposal" could  work using parts of the DOI solution suggested by Ed.  I also
show how both DOI and the "algorithmic" approach could be combined in a truly
open linking framework.  My remarks build on the following issues raised by Ed,
agreed by Mark:

> > *the linker needs to take a journal title abbreviation from
> > a citation, identify the publisher and then apply the
> > algorithm (including any non-standard journal abbreviation,
> > ISSN or Coden)
>
> > Some things need to happen before the DOI system can work as
> > a scaleable solution, but the idea is that publishers will
> > take citations and batch submit them to a central service to
> > be matched to DOIs.  This requires a metadata database and a
> > matching service - both seen as a critical applications by
> > IDF members.  In this scenario the publisher, or linker,
> > doesn't need to know anything about the cited journal or its
> > publisher.  It could be very easy to submit citations and
> > get back DOIs that can be used for linking.
>

Given these issues, one could also think of a central service, "open to the
public and real-time" in stead of "publisher-only and batch".  The service would
accept as input a citation sent by any service-provider and it would provide as
output a completely parsed, tagged and corrected record.  All the heuristics and
meta-information required to do this will also be required for the DOI batch
solution mentioned by Ed.  The output record would contain all the information
that is essential to proceed with an algorithmic linking mechanism.  The output
record could also contain the DOI and the service provider could choose which
resolution mechanism to use: DOI-based, algorithm-based, both.

Alternatively, this service could  be accessible only to publihsers, who indeed
would send citations in batch.  But in stead of getting only DOI back, they
would get the parsed, tagged, enhanced record back and store this in their local
databases.  As suggested in my SFX paper, each citation in a paper would come
with a clickable link, and clicking the link would transfer the parsed record
corresponding to the citation from the publisher's database to the requesting
service provider (in the case of my paper the SFX-service ran by a library).
This service could then decide which links to provide for that citation, using
algorithmic linking information (available from SLinkS), using information on
the "local" context (availibility of A&I databases and OPACs to link into, ...)
and using the DOI.  As mentioned in earlier comments, such a framework is "open"
and solves the Harvard problem.

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

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