CrossTech

Following on from my previous post about prism:doi I didn't mention, or reference, the ongoing ISO work on DOI, Indeed I hadn't realized that the DOI site now has a status update on the ISO work:

"The DOI® System is currently being standardised through ISO. It is expected that the process will be finalised during 2008. In December 2007 the Working Group for this project approved a final draft as a Committee Draft (standard for voting) which is now being processed by ISO. Copies of the Committee Draft (SC9N475) and an accompanying explanatory document detailing issues dealt with during the standards process (SC9N474) are provided here for information.

Committee Draft 26324 is subject to ISO's copyright and is for information only to those interested in the project; it may not be re-distributed. This is currently undergoing the formal ISO voting process; the deadline for comments on CD 26324 from TC46/SC9's national bodies is April 25, 2008: please contact your national member of ISO TC46/SC9 if you would like it contribute to comments on this draft standard. Other documents for the ISO DOI Working Group are available on a DOI Project Register."

Posted by Tony Hammond at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The new PRISM spec (v. 2.0) was published this week, see the press release. (Downloads are available here.)

This is a significant development as there is support for XMP profiles, to complement the existing XML and RDF/XML profiles. And, as PRISM is one of the major vocabularies being used by publishers, I would urge you all to go take a look at it and to consider upgrading your applications to using it.

One caveat. There's a new element prism:doi (PRISM Namespace, 4.2.13) which sits alongside another new element prism:url (PRISM Namespace, 4.2.55). Unfortunately the prism:doi element is shown to take DOI proxy URL as its value - and not the DOI string itself, e.g.

• Model #1
  <prism:doi rdf:resource=”http://dx.doi.org/10.1030/03054”/>
• Model #2
  <prism:doi>http://dx.doi.org/10.1030/03054</prism:doi>"

To satisfy Model #1 above a URI form for DOI would be required. And this is not the service URI denoted by the proxy. It would either have to be:

• Model #1 - Registered URI Form
  <prism:doi rdf:resource=”info:doi/10.1030/03054”/>
• Model #1 - Unregistered URI Form
  <prism:doi rdf:resource=”doi:10.1030/03054”/>

Any comments? Some guidelines from CrossRef would be useful - although maybe further discussion is required. It is, of course, a constant bugbear that "doi:" remains an unregistered URI scheme.

Posted by Tony Hammond at 05:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

From the beginning our OpenURL resolver has had a non standard feature of returning metadata in response to a request instead of redirecting to the referrent. This feature returned one of our older XML formats which is a bit limited as to the fields it contains.

Sometime after our resolver was deployed we introduced a more verbose XML format for DOI metadata called 'UNIXREF". This was always available to regular queries against the CrossRef system but was never introduced to the OpenURL resolver (for no particular reason).

We've since learned that some user's are relying on the OpenURL's metadata feature to build proper references in situations where they have a DOI and that the older XML format is insufficient. Therefor I've added a 'format' parameter to our OpenURL resolver which allows one to request the more verbose UNIXREF. (see www.crossref.org/openurl)

As always please feel free to contact us regarding new features or changes to existing features that might be helpful.

Regards,
Chuck

Posted by Chuck Koscher at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

OK, after a number of delays due to everything from indexing slowness to router problems, I'm happy to say that the first public beta of our WordPress citation plugin is available for download via SourceForge. A Movable Type version is in the works.

And congratulations to Trey at OpenHelix who became laudably impatient, found the SourceForge entry for the plugin back on February 8th and seems to have been testing it since. He has a nice description of how it works (along with screenshots), so I won't repeat the effort here.

Having said that, I do include the text of the README after the jump. Please have a look at it before you install, because it might save you some mystification.

Description

A WordPress plugin that allows you to search CrossRef metadata using citations or partial citations. When you find the reference that you want, insert the formatted and DOI-linked citation into your blog posting along with supporting COINs metadata. The plugin supports both a long citation format and a short (op. cit.) format.

Warnings, Caveats and Weasel Words

Please note the following about this plugin:

1. We are releasing this as a test. It is running on R&D equipment in a non-production environment and so it may disappear without warning or perform erratically. If it isn't working for some reason, come back later and try again. If it seems to be broken for a prolonged period of time, then please report the problem to us via sourceforge.
2. There is currently a 20 item limit on the number of hits returned per query. This might seem arbitrary and stingy, but please remember- we are not trying to create a fully blown search engine- we're just trying to create a citation lookup service. Of course, if, after looking at how the service is used, it looks like we need to up this limit, we will.
3. If you look in the plugin options (or at the code), you will see that the system includes an API key. At the moment we have no restrictions on use of this service, but have included this in case we need to protect the system from abuse.
4. The bulk of the functionality we have developed is actually at the back-end. This plugin is just a lightweight interface to that back-end. You can examine the guts of the plugin in order to easily figure out how to create similar functionality for your favorite blog platform, wiki, etc. If you do create something, please let us know. We'd love to see what people are building.
5. We are continuing to experiment with the metadata search function in order to increase its accuracy and flexibility. Again, this might result in seemingly inconsistent behavior. Did we mention that this is a test?
6. Please note that this API is not meant for bulk harvesting of CrossRef metadata. If you need such facilities, then please look at our web site for information about our metadata services.
7. The data currently behind the plugin is *just* a December 2007 snapshot of our our complete journal article metadata. We have not added books or proceedings yet. We will do so soon and we will start updating the metadata weekly.

We welcome your ideas for tools that we can provide to help researchers. Please, please, please send comments, requests, queries and ideas to us at:

citation-plugin@crossref.org

Posted by Geoffrey Bilder at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)