Content Negotiation for CrossRef DOIs
So does anybody remember the posting DOIs and Linked Data: Some Concrete Proposals?
Well, we went with option "D."
From now on, DOIs, expressed as HTTP URIs, can be used with content-negotiation.
Let's get straight to the point. If you have curl installed, you can start playing with content-negotiation and CrossRef DOIs right away:
curl -D - -L -H "Accept: application/rdf+xml" "http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1157784"
curl -D - -L -H "Accept: text/turtle" "http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1157784"
curl -D - -L -H "Accept: application/atom+xml" "http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1157784"
Or if you are already using CrossRef's "unixref" format:
curl -D - -L -H "Accept: application/unixref+xml" "http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1157784"
This will work with over 46 million CrossRef DOIs as of today, but the beauty of the setup is that from now on, any DOI registration agency can enable content negotiation for their constituencies as well. DataCite- we're looking at you ;-) .
It also means that, as registration agency members (CrossRef publishers, for instance) start providing more complete and richer representations of their content, we can simply redirect content-negotiated requests directly to them.
We expect that that this development will round-out CrossRef's efforts to support standard APIs including OpenURL and OAI_PMH and we look forward to seeing DOIs increasingly used in linked data applications.
Finally, CrossRef would just like to thank the IDF and CNRI for their hard work on this as well as Tony Hammond and Leigh Dodds for their valuable advice and persistent goading.