Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

Taking D2D Services to the Users with

OpenURL, RSS, and OAI-PMH

Chuck Koscher

Technology Director, CrossRef

ckoscher@CrossRef.org

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

• Everything is online – if it’s not online, it doesn’t exist

• Everything is interlinked – if it’s not linked it doesn’t exist

• Breaking of barriers between academic and consumer behavior – user expectations are set by Google, eBay, etc.

• Journal brand strong but moving to article economy

• Economic models changing – Open Access

• Technical Reports and other grey lit are now findable

• Books going online

Scholarly Publishing Trends

“Find-ability precedes usability, you can not use what you can not find"STM-TMR 2006 Amanda Spiteri, Marketing Director Elsevier

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

One window: Your Web page

Getting noticed requires a store window

Users must know the URL

Content may be indexed by a search engine

User must read their RSS feeds

User might have brand affinity

… but there are billions of web pages

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

There are lots of windows

…among others

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

Metadata distribution via standardized methods is the bridge to these windows for your content

Strength Complexity Targeted use

RSS Wide adoption, great support, browser integrations, mass-user appeal.

Simple to create and distribute. Just create an XML file and stick it on your web server

Distribution of ‘newsy’ data most often for human consumption

OpenURL All inclusive specification, well positioned for advanced or diverse applications.

Simple to complex syntax, only the more basic examples are human readable. Software implementation can be complex, lots of decision paths.

Distribution of metadata or content of individual items, most likely implemented as part of a linking system.

OAI-PMH Robust well thought out transaction model. Very extensible and adaptable. Wide spread adoption within the industry.

Implementation is moderate to complex. Good frameworks (OCLC) available. Requires substantial resources (compute and human) for any non-trivial repository.

Distribution of large volumes of metadata most likely to automated harvesters.

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

OpenURL is packaging

is a transport syntax (a box), a way to sendOpenURL

Complexity stems from the number of ways you can accomplish the same task: send metadata to a service (a resolver)

ContextObject

MetaData

OpenURLContextObject

MetaData

OpenURL

MetaData

OpenURL

referentreference

ContextObject

MetaData

OpenURL

referentreference

MetaData

OpenURL

contextreference

ContextObject

referentreference

OpenURL

contextreference

ContextObject

MetaData

MetaData

is an internal wrapper (box within a box)

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

http://www.crossref.org/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004 &rft_id=info:doi/10.1361/15477020418786&noredirect=true

OpenURL basic example

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

http://www.crossref.org/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&url_tim=2004-01-09&url_ctx_fmt=info:Aofi/fmt:Akev:Amtx:Actx&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info:Aofi/enc:AUTF-8&ctx_id=345871&ctx_tim=2002-03-20T08:A55:A12Z&rft_val_fmt=info:Aofi/fmt:Akev:mtx:journal&rft.atitle=Isolation+of+a+common+receptor+for+coxsackie+B&rft.jtitle=Science&rft.aulast=Bergelson&rft.auinit=J&rft.date=1997&rft.volume=275&rft.spage=1320&rft.epage=1323&rfe_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rfe.atitle=p27-p16+Chimera:+A+Superior+Antiproliferative&rfe.jtitle=Molecular+Therapy&rfe.aulast=McArthur&rfe.aufirst=James&rfe.date=2001&rfe.volume=3&rfe.issue=1&rfe.spage=8&rfe.epage=13&req_ref_fmt=http://lib.caltech.edu/fmt/ldap-mtx.html&req_ref=http://ldap.caltech.edu/janed/record.txt

OpenURL: In-Line context object example

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

http://www.crossref.org/openurl

NISO Z39.88-2004 OpenURL is a very comprehensive framework!

CrossRef implemented the San Antonio Profile #1 The basic inline by value model might address a high percentage of actual needs

By consolidating metadata in one place (CrossRef), publishers have created an ideal circumstance for a single resolver to reach a large amount of content.

An OpenURL ‘solution’ is not embodied in a single place. It is a community of contributors using a common language. OpenURL is the Esperanto of linking.

No CrossRef account needed, available free to the public

Number of resolutions in 2006 => 608,756

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

OAI-PMH is a set of commands used to pull metadata from a compliant repository

Verb Use Example

Identify Ask a repository to tell you about itself.

oai.crossref.org/OAIHandler?verb=Identify

ListMetadataFormats

Ask a repository which formats (XML schemas) data is available in. Compliant repositories support Dublin Core.

oai.crossref.org/OAIHandler?verb=ListMetadataFormats

ListSets Ask a repository to list the hierarchical structure it uses to organize itself

oai.crossref.org/OAIHandler?verb=Identify

ListIdentifiers Ask a repository to list the identifiers in the whole repository or a particular set

oai.crossref.org/OAIHandler?verb=ListIdentifiers

ListRecords Ask a repository to return the metadata for all records in the repository or those in a given set

oai.crossref.org/OAIHandler?verb=ListRecords&SetSpec=10.1002:300:1999

GetRecord Ask the repository for the metadata of a given identifier.

oai.crossref.org/OAIHandler?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=cr_unixml&identifier=info:doi/10.1002/jnr.490010101

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

OAI-PMH sample responses - Identify

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

OAI-PMH sample responses

ListSets

ListSets&resumptionToken=1160597811347!698!205002

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

OAI-PMH sample responseverb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=cr_unixml&identifier=info:doi/10.1002/jnr.490010101

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

OAI-PMH sample responseverb=ListIdentifiers&metadataPrefix=cr_unixml&set=10.1002:297:2004

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

CrossRef’s OAI-PMH Mission

December 2005 CrossRef announced a Web Services initiative

Provide a central point for the distribution of metadata from 100s of publishers, for millions of identifiers

Utilize common/existing distribution protocols and technology

Targeted at consumers of mass quantities of metadata.

Active: MS Academic Live and Scirus (search engines)

Looking: EBSCO, Euopean Biomatics Institute, others…

Is not ‘open’ (e.g. it is not free), uses IP authentication for access control

Recipient identified by 2 IP address ranges

Content can be selectively mapped to a recipient (opt-in/opt-out) at the publisher or title level

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

RSS

CrossRef is not currently operating any RSS feeds (we have Blogs which are kinda sorta the same thing)

Members view RSS feeds as a way to reach out and touch end users and bring them to the member’s site

For end uses:

OpenURL is like plumbing (“Intel inside”), they really don’t care

OAI-PMH is a what?

RSS they’ve probably heard of (blogs) and may even know how to use

CrossRef members have recognized the need to establish guidelines on content composition by feed type.

e.g. a TOC feed should be organized the same way from one publisher to the next in order to avoid end user confusion.

(a NISO initiative?)

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

…Google uses the <link> field in your feed to gather URLs from your site and uses the modified date field (the <pubDate> field for RSS feeds and the <modified> date for Atom feeds) to learn when each URL was last modified … Make sure that the feed is located in the highest-level directory you want search engines to crawl

RSS syndication

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34656&ctx=sibling

Of course RSS is used for syndication as well

Example:

Syndication feed —Google accepts RSS (Real Simple Syndication) 2.0 and Atom 0.3 feeds. Generally, you would use this format only if your site already has a syndication feed. Note that this method may not let Google know about all the URLs in your site, since the feed may only provide information on recent URLs.

Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users AreNovember 2-3, 2006

Conclusion

Bringing users to content requires metadata distribution

Be complete (article title, all authors, citations) Be accurate (author=given-name + surname, not the entire byline) Use a widely accepted (and expressive) format: NLM, DC, CrossRef

Position metadata for discovery

Aggregated distribution like CrossRef’s PMH service Register as a PMH data provider (http://www.openarchives.org/data/registerasprovider.html) Find syndication channels (syndication.iop.org, Feedzilla, MedicineNet)