Ms Ann Okerson
ICOLC
c/o NERL
130 Wall Street
PO Box 208240
New Haven, CT 06520
Dear Ms Okerson,
Thank you for your letter of October 30, 2000. As libraries are the main customers of CrossRef's member publishers, CrossRef shares your concerns about the development of linking across a wide range of resources and services. CrossRef believes that standards and interoperability are very important to the creation of useful, viable linking services.
The CrossRef system is in part an application of the DOI system, which in turn is an implementation of CNRI's Handle system. CrossRef has become an International DOI Foundation (IDF) Registration Agency, which means that there is a formal relationship between the two organizations and that CrossRef will be closely involved in the development of the DOI/Handle System. The linking infrastructure that is in place today is only a starting point, but it is a necessary one. The current infrastructure has been described as "one DOI = one URL" which means that a DOI resolves to one URL registered by the publisher. The URL usually resolves directly to a publisher's site, which you mention as a source of concern to libraries.
It has always been clearly stated by the IDF that the DOI is an open development initiative that is by no means finalized. CrossRef is in full agreement with this. In a May 1999 D-lib magazine article Norman Paskin, Director of the IDF, wrote:
"…The DOI therefore becomes a specifier for routing to an occurrence of a piece of material on a publisher's web site, and many of the prototype demonstrations and current practical implementations of DOI embody this functionality. However, the intent of the DOI is not for this to be the end-point, since restricting all uses of material to routing via the publishers web site is neither possible nor productive. The DOI is intended as a public identifier for use in many applications and for local uses, and as with other information identifiers the DOI should be independent of specific applications -- an identifier that can be freely used in many contexts and by many users." (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may99/05paskin.html)
Moving forward we need to experiment with creating more sophisticated models for linking and I'm pleased to say that this has already started to happen. In July CrossRef co-sponsored the "NISO/DLF/CrossRef Workshop on Localization in Reference Linking" (a meeting report is available at http://www.niso.org/CNRI-mtg.html). This meeting was very useful and an outline of a proposed architecture for localized linking was developed. A few weeks ago there was a smaller meeting to discuss a practical prototype involving the DLF, CrossRef, IDF, CNRI, University of Illinois, Ohio State University, Cornell University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Ex Libris, Elsevier Science, American Institute of Physics and Harcourt. Running through the first half of 2001, the prototype will test localized linking. Information about the prototype will be made public as it progresses. There are some very difficult problems to solve, but we have made good progress so far.
It is important to note that getting all CrossRef member publishers (61 at present, of which 60% are non-profit) to use the DOI and agree to a common set of metadata to deposit with CrossRef is a big achievement. Without persistent identifiers and standardized metadata for journal articles, even basic reference linking is difficult, let alone more sophisticated localized linking. DOIs and standardized metadata are a powerful combination.
CrossRef was founded to enable broad-based linking among scholarly journals. Having established a strong position in its initial start-up phase, CrossRef has started to actively work with the library community on solutions that will benefit librarians, publishers and most importantly, scientists, researchers and the scholarly communication process.
Sincerely,
Ed Pentz
Executive Director
cc: Eric Swanson, Chairman, CrossRef
Norman Paskin, International DOI Foundation