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The Joy of DOI: Publishers Start to
Get Serious About Persistent Online Content |
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26 July 2004 |
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The Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
System that allows commercial publishers to provide
persistent links and metadata for published online content
is starting to gain some steam in recent weeks as
commercial publishers begin to focus on how to adapt this
scheme to more of their product lines. DOI promises to
offer a world in which content not only doesn't disappear
but also can provide a changing array of services when
users go looking for these persistent identifiers. Great
tools, but what will it take to get DOIs rolling along for
a broader array of content? Opportunities abound, but the
exploitation of them remains stuck in the limited focus of
DOI efforts to date. |
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The
Uniform Resource Locator (URL) addressing scheme that links
us to Web-based content has been a gateway to a universe of
content unimaginable to anyone used to having to thumb through
their local library's
Dewey Decimal System card catalog to hunt down content.
Instead of having to jot down a cryptic string of characters
and mosey through the musty stacks of books and journals, the
URL conspired with Web browsers to provide hyperlinks to
content with a click of a mouse button. Unfortunately, URLs
were never designed to define content entities abstractly, only
to provide their current whereabouts. As content moved, old
URLs no longer provided authoritative references - leaving
researchers and librarians scratching their heads as to how to
provide definitive content references to vast swaths of
electronic content at their disposal.
Then along came
DOI, The
Digital Object Identifier System that enables permanent
references to online content, no matter where and how it may be
stored at a given point in time. DOIs prefixes are issued under
the aegis of the International DOI Foundation via a number of
worldwide registration agencies, somewhat like obtaining
Internet domain names (e.g., "shore.com") via a number of
domain name registration agents. Once a DOI prefix has been
assigned to a specific domain of published content (for
example, 10.1036) an individual DOI can then be defined
for one or more content items or services (for example,
10.1036/1097-8542.800100), which in turn may be used to link to
a summary of the item and links to the item itself and
publishers services relevant to that item - the card in the
library catalog, if you will (for example,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.800100).
Each DOI has a rich set of metadata associated with it to help
people understand its origin, classification and one or more
URLs pointing to the current online instances of the desired
object. With DOIs publishers have attained a degree of
permanent reference for digital content that allows both
publishing houses and major institutions to devise rational
ways to reference it and to deliver a range of fulfillment and
client relations services that can change for an item over time
even if the item itself does not change.
This is all good news, but the better
news is that commercial publishers are actually starting to use
DOIs to support the marketing of professional content. In the
past two weeks there have been two significant announcements of
publishers extending their core commercial content into
DOI-referenced management:
Marketresearch.com announced that it was making its
entire online collection of content available with DOIs and
McGraw-Hill Professional announced that its Access Science
line of reference information is now using DOIs to facilitate
content access, sales and service - both courtesy of
registration agent
Content Directions, Inc. The current count of registered
DOIs at
CrossRef, the largest DOI registration agent, now tops 11
million. Moves such as this begin to take DOIs from
Esperanto-like obscurity to mainstream usage that may give
publishers of all kinds the ability to provide more stable
value to their content assets in the swirling sea of online
content. DOIs offer a great deal of power, but one wonders
whether they are actually going to make it as a widely accepted
method of content reference. Here are a few reasons why DOIs
may - or may not - hit the big time:
- DOIs service the needs of serious
professional publishers of intellectual property. For
institutions used to packaging and purchasing scholarly and
professional-oriented content, DOIs are a potential boon for
those needing to provide reference-worthy content in
electronic form. The effort to do so, though, is not always
in line with many newer sources of extremely valuable content
such as collaboration services that may not be suited for
traditional publishing cycles and methods. It's also still a
very hand-held process to get DOI infrastructure established
through registration agents as interested in providing
value-add services for specific publishing communities as
they are in getting content available to large audiences.
DOIs are poised for strong success in a rapidly
broadening range of scholarly publications, but without
stronger marketing and support the mantra is likely to remain
dim in the ears of most Web-oriented publishers.
- DOIs can provide a wide range of
publisher services without having to rely on Web sites.
Though digital rights management has been on the minds of DOI
afficionados for many years and DOIs are well-suited to
adaptation to the rights management environment, there's not
been much forward movement with publishers adapting the
XML-based DOI mechanism to content based object distribution
beyond a relatively thin smattering of eBooks. This is
perhaps one of the greatest potential advantages of DOI in
the long run - to be able to provide persistent
identification of a digital content publication's "lineage"
no matter how many hands a content object may pass through or
how poorly it may be indexed or stored locally. Expect DOIs
in combination with DRM to be one of the potential "sleeper"
combinations that could bust this capability out into broader
use.
- DOIs are compatible with Open URLs.
The
OpenURL standard for providing transportable content
metadata and context-sensitive references to content objects.
So, for example, if there's an instance of a publication in
your local library, the OpenURL could resolve a query to the
local copy of that publication. OpenURLs are compatible with
most DOI schemes, and provide much of the same leverage
without some of the publisher-oriented overhead. While they
so far lack much commercial incentive for their use, they are
gaining in adaptation in many circles developing content
services, most recently from those backing open access
journals and library services. DOIs help established
publishers market themselves better, but not focusing on
content that's beyond traditional publishing offers an
opportunity for newer types of publishing organization to
define commercial models via OpenURLs that may not rely on
DOIs - and may in the process stymie the movement of
broadening the acceptance of DOIs.
DOIs are a great development for publishers, information
professionals and their scholarly audiences trying to make
sense of digital content in a way that can support both
ecommerce and ongoing research. Their progression in to more
commercial acceptance in those circles is welcome, but that
leaves the rest of the content world wondering when they may
begin to have more flexible and persistent access to premium
content for a broader array of content. I'm not about to go
back to the Dewey card catalog while I am waiting for such
developments, but sooner would be nicer than later.
-
John Blossom
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