University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

One of the judges for the [Elsevier Article 2.0
Contest](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2008/11/elsevier-article-20-contest.html)
is [Andrew Perry](http://blog.pansapiens.com/), whose blog has some
posts on Noel O\'Boyle\'s OpenRef idea (see [DOI or DOH? Proposal for a
RESTful unique identifier for
papers](http://baoilleach.blogspot.com/2008/01/doi-or-doh-proposal-for-restful-unique.html)).
Andrew discusses [some
implementations](http://blog.pansapiens.com/2008/06/06/resolveref-updated-now-with-auto-suggest-and-source-code/)
he has come up with, and compares OpenRef with OpenURL. This prompted me
to add OpenRef-style identifiers to [bioGUID\'s OpenURL
resolver](http://bioguid.info/openurl).  
  
Basically, OpenRef is a human-readable identifier for an article, based
on concatenating the journal name, year of publication, volume number,
and starting page, for example:  
  
[openref://BMC
Bioinformatics/2007/8/487](http://bioguid.info/openref/BMC%20Bioinformatics/2007/8/487)  
  
The equivalent OpenURL link would be  
  
[http://bioguid.info/openurl/?genre=article &title=BMC%20Bioinformatics
&date=2007 &volume=8
&spage=487](http://bioguid.info/openurl/?genre=article&title=BMC%20Bioinformatics&date=2007&volume=8&spage=487)  
  
Andrew notes:  

> A key cosmetic (and philosophical) difference between OpenURL and
> OpenRef/ResolveRef URLs is that OpenURL uses HTTP GET fields, eg
> ?title=bla&issn=12345, while OpenRef/ResolveRef uses the URL path
> itself eg, somejournalname/2008/4/1996. It's a bit like one scheme was
> designed in the age of CGI scripts, while the other was designed for
> web applications capable of more RESTful behaviour. In my mind OpenURL
> is more versatile but much uglier, while OpenRef is cleaner and
> simpler but can only reference journal articles.

Of course, it is straightforward to add openref-style URLs to an OpenURL
resolver by using URL rewriting, for example:  
  

    RewriteRule ^openref/(.*)/([0-9]{4})(.*)/(.*) 
    openurl.php?title=$1&date=$2&volume=$3&spage=$4&genre=article [NC,L]

  
I\'ve done this for my [resolver](http://bioguid.info/openurl). One
limitation of OpenRef is that there are many different ways to write a
journal\'s name, so you can\'t determine whether two OpenRef\'s refer to
the same journal by simply string matching (as you can with a DOI, for
example \-- if the DOI\'s are different the article is different). For
example I might write *BMC Bioinformatics* and you might write *BMC
Bioinf.*. One way around tis is to have unique identifiers for journals,
which of course is the approach Robert Cameron advocated with [Universal
Serial Item Names and
JACC\'s](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2007/10/universal-serial-item-names.html).
The obvious candidate for journal identifier is the ISSN. I guess the
problem here is that it\'s easier to use the journal name rather than
require the user to know the ISSN. OpenRefs are certainly easier to
write. Hence, I think they are great as a simple way for people to
construct a resolvable URL for an artcle, but not so great as an
identifier.


One of the judges for the Elsevier Article 2.0 Contest is Andrew Perry, whose blog has some posts on Noel O'Boyle's OpenRef idea (see DOI or DOH? Proposal for a RESTful unique identifier for papers). Andrew discusses some implementations he has come up with, and compares OpenRef with OpenURL. This prompted me to add OpenRef-style identifiers to bioGUID's OpenURL resolver.

OpenRef and bioGUID

Following on from the discussion of [BHL and
DOIs](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2007/10/bhl-and-dois.html), I stumbled
across some remarkable work by Robert Cameron at SFU. Cameron has
developed Universal Serial Item Names (USIN). The approach is spelled
out in detail in [Towards Universal Serial Item
Names](http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/jodi-12/10) (also on
[Scribd](http://www.scribd.com/doc/432360/Toward-Universal-Serial-Item-Names)).
This lengthy document deals with how to develop user-friendly
identifiers for journal articles, books, and other documents. The
solution looks less baroque than SICIs, which I\'ve [discussed
earlier](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2007/06/making-taxonomic-literature-online.html).  
  
There is also a web site ([USIN.org](http://usin.org)), complete with
examples and source code. Identifiers for books are straightforward, for
instance
[bibp:ISBN/0-86542-889-1](http://usin.org/bibp1.0/resolve?usin=ISBN/0-86542-889-1)
identifies a certain book:  

  
For journals things are slightly more complicated. However, Cameron
simplified things a little in his subsequent paper [Scholar-Friendly DOI
Suffixes with JACC: Journal Article Citation
Convention](ftp://fas.sfu.ca/pub/cs/TR/1998/CMPT1998-08.html) (also on
[Scribd](http://www.scribd.com/doc/432354/ScholarFriendly-DOI-Suffixes-with-JACC-Journal-Article-Citation-Convention)).  

> JACC (Journal Article Citation Convention) is proposed as an
> alternative to SICI (Serial Item and Contribution Identifier) as a
> convention for specifying journal articles in DOI (Digital Object
> Identifier) suffixes. JACC is intended to provide a very simple tool
> for scholars to easily create Web links to DOIs and to also support
> interoperability between legacy article citation systems and DOI-based
> services. The simplicity of JACC in comparison to SICI should be a
> boon both to the scholar and to the implementor of DOI responders.

  
USIN and JACC use the minimal number of elements in order to identifier
an article, such as journal code (e.g., ISSN or an accepted acronym),
volume number, and starting page. Using ISSNs ensures globally unique
identifiers for journals, but the scheme can also use acronyms, hence
those journals that lack ISSNs could be catered for. The scheme is
simple, and in many cases will provide the bare minimum of information
necessary to locate an item via an OpenURL resolver. Indeed, one simple
way to implement USIN identifiers would be to have a service that takes
URIs of the form :@ and resolves them behind the scenes using OpenURL.
Hence we get simple identifiers that are resolvable, without the baroque
approach of SICIs.  
  
When I get the chance I may add support for something like this to
[bioGUID](http://bioguid.info).


Following on from the discussion of BHL and DOIs, I stumbled across some remarkable work by Robert Cameron at SFU. Cameron has developed Universal Serial Item Names (USIN). The approach is spelled out in detail in Towards Universal Serial Item Names (also on Scribd). This lengthy document deals with how to develop user-friendly identifiers for journal articles, books, and other documents.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

OpenRef and bioGUID

Universal Serial Item Names