The Many Facets of Metadata Exchange Between Publishers and the Research Community:

The Role that A&I Services and DOIs Play in Providing Access

to Electronic Content

Heather Ruland Staines,

Global eProduct Manager, SpringerLink

ALA Midwinter, January 24, 2009

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Overview

• Varied Uses of Metadata

• A&I Services for Content Discovery

–Why Indexing?

–Types of A&I services

–How does the process work?

• DOI (Digital Object Identifier) as Discovery Tool

–What is a DOI?

–Why participate in DOI registration services like CrossRef?

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Targets for Publisher Metadata

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Why is indexing essential?

• Users are no longer browsing in a library

• Usage comes from on-line indexing services, not from users browsing

publisher databases

• Publishers need to be well-represented in all important indexing

services

• Google is by far the most important

• Discipline specific services are also key

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Type of Indexing Services

• Interdisciplinary (Thomson Reuters (formerly ISI), Google, Scopus)

vs. Discipline specific (PubMed/Medline, ChemAbstracts, ADS

(astronomy, physics), MathReviews, Philosopher’s Index, ERIC

(education))

• Selective (Thomson Reuters, PubMed/Medline) vs. All-inclusive

–Criteria: quality of articles (content and publication), quality of authors,

(# publications, # citations), quality of editorial board, timeliness of

publication)

• Indexing-only vs. Reviewing/Abstracting

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Springer A&I Policy

• Springer A&I directly supports ISI, PubMed, and the priority indexing

services.

• Smaller indexing services are handled by individual publishing editors.

• All metadata transfer to such services is handled by Springer A&I in

coordination with Springer Heidelberg

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What is a DOI?

• A digital object identifier is an alphanumeric string created both to:

–Uniquely identify a content work, and to

–Serve as a stable link to that content’s digital location

• A DOI stays the same regardless of changes in ownership or location

because it is just the name used to look up an address in an easily

updateable directory

DOI -- 10.1007/s00261-008-9441-3

DOI -- 10.1134/S1063771008060018

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DOI-enabled linking

A special thanks to Ed Pentz of CrossRef for his kind permission

to use portions of this and some of the following slides.

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DOI syntax: A NISO standard

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International DOI Foundation

• IDF oversees central DOI system and promotes DOI as a standard

• Provides the organizational infrastructure that ensures persistence and

interoperability

• Includes Eight Registration Agencies:

–European Union Office of Publications

–TIB (Technische Informationsbibliotek)

–R. R. Bowker

–Nielsen Bookdata

–CAL (Copyright Agency Limited, Australia)

–mEDRA (multilingual European Registration Agency)

–Wanfang Data (an affiliate of the Chinese Min. of Sci. and Tech.)

–CrossRef

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Why Be in CrossRef?

• CrossRef (founded 2000) is the largest DOI registration agency

• CrossRef participating publishers collaborate on digital infrastructure

(organizational and technical) for researchers

• Protect users from dead external links and Error 404 messages

• Integrates with Open URL

• To get persistent IDs for content

• To drive more traffic to content

• To turn references into hyperlinks

• To pull in cited-by links (what other publications cite this content)

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Content Types for DOIs

• Books

• Standards

• Proceedings

• Images

• Figures

• MRW entries

• Datasets

• Working Papers

• Dissertations

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CrossRef Implementation

• Publishers deposit DOIs and metadata to enable inbound linking

–As soon as content is registered in CrossRef, it becomes visible for

linking by other participants

• Create outbound links from references by querying the CrossRef

metadata database

• Cited-by: Allows any member publisher to retrieve cross-publisher cited-

by information and implement a “what cites this” feature

–Helps the academic publishing community track and preserve the

scholarly citation record

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Thank you!

Any questions?

Heather Ruland Stainesheather.staines@springer.com646-201-8474

CrossRef questions may be directed to:Ed Pentzepentz@crossref.org

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Impact Factor Calculation

• Nc = Number of citations from year y to articles published in year y-1 and y-2.

• N1 = Number of articles published in year y-1

• N2 = Number of articles published in year y-2

• IF = Nc / (N1 + N2)