1、 NISO TR-05-2013 IOTA Working Group Summary of Activities and Outcomes A Technical Report of the National Information Standards Organization Approved: April 26, 2013 NISO TR-05-2013 About NISO Technical Reports NISO Technical Reports describe the work and conclusions of a working group chartered by
2、the organization to study a particular problem or issue that is related to NISOs standardization interests. However, unlike NISO standards or recommended practices, they do not have requirements for compliance or recommend “best practices”although their conclusions may contain some recommendations.
3、Additionally, no consensus process of the NISO voting membership was used in their creation or approval. They are strictly informative in nature. Published by National Information Standards Organization (NISO) 3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 302 Baltimore, MD 21211 www.niso.org 301-652-2512 Copyright
4、2013 by the National Information Standards Organization All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. For noncommercial purposes only, this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the publishe
5、r, provided it is reproduced accurately, the source of the material is identified, and the NISO copyright status is acknowledged. All inquiries regarding translations into other languages or commercial reproduction or distribution should be addressed to: NISO, 3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 302, Balt
6、imore, MD 21211. ISBN: 978-1-937522-17-9 NISO TR-05-2013 iii Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Purpose and Scope 1 1.2 Terms and Definitions . 1 2 IOTA Use Cases 4 2.1 Librarian Use Case . 4 2.2 Content Provider Use Case. 5 2.3 Link Resolver Use Case 5 3 IOTA Project Approach 5 4 The IOTA reporting syst
7、em 6 4.1 Components . 6 4.2 Architecture 7 4.2.1 Ingest . 7 4.2.2 Database Structure 7 4.2.3 Reporting . 8 5 Completeness Index 10 5.1 Description . 10 5.2 Method 0: Descriptive Reports (Source, Metrics) . 10 5.3 Method 1: Qualitative Judgment 10 5.4 Method 2: Correlation Method . 11 5.5 Method 3: S
8、tepwise Regression 12 6 Recommendations and Next Steps 13 Appendix A : OpenURL Elements in IOTA Repository 15 Bibliography 21 NISO TR-05-2013 iv Foreword About this Technical Report In November 2009, Adam Chandler submitted a proposal (Chandler, 2009a) to NISOs Business Information Topic Committee t
9、o investigate the feasibility of creating industry-wide, transparent and scalable metrics for evaluating and comparing the quality of OpenURL implementations across content providers. The proposed project was to build on work developed under a 2008/2009 Mellon Foundation grant, for which Chandler wa
10、s the lead investigator. An existing reporting system and database were to be ported to a NISO-supported server and the new working group would collect further data, analyze the data, and develop metrics to evaluate OpenURL quality. The proposal was approved by the Business Information Topic Committ
11、ee in December 2009 and the Working Group that was formed was presented with the following problem statement: The OpenURL standard is a widely deployed technology to facilitate linking to resources across the library supply chain. The OpenURL-formatted URL carries the data about an item to the link
12、resolver of the library. The resolver compares the metadata embedded within the OpenURL with what is held in the librarys collection and presents the available options in a results page. For a book, there is usually a link to the librarys catalog card; for an article, ideally this is a link directly
13、 to the full-text of the article. At a typical academic library thousands of OpenURL requests are initiated by patrons each week. The problem is too often these links do not work as expected, leaving patrons frustrated by a lower than desired quality of service. Periodically mention is made in the l
14、ibrary literature to problems with OpenURL linking, but since the OpenURL standard was introduced a decade ago, no systematic method has been designed and carried out to benchmark it. This work is intended to fill the gap. The study was to be conducted over a two-year period, concluding with a repor
15、t reviewing the results and making recommendations about how or whether to continue the IOTA research. This technical report is the projects promised deliverable. NISO Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee Members The Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee had the following members at the time it app
16、roved this Technical Report. Tim Babbitt Cambridge Information Group Tim Shearer University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Libraries Pascal Calarco, Co-chair University of Waterloo Library Lucy Harrison, Co-chair Florida Virtual Campus Peter Murray Lyrasis Chris Shillum Reed Elsevier Jeff Penka OCLC
17、Online Computer Library Center NISO TR-05-2013 v NISO IOTA Working Group Members This technical report was developed by the following members of the Improving OpenURL Through Analytics (IOTA) Working Group: Adam Chandler (Chair) Cornell University Library Clara Ruttenberg University of Maryland Rafa
18、l Kasprowski Rice University Elizabeth Winter Georgia Tech Library Susan Marcin Columbia University Jim Wismer Thomson Reuters Oliver Pesch EBSCO Information Services Aron Wolf Serials Solutions Acknowledgements The IOTA Working Group would like to acknowledge the important contributions made by Ell
19、en Rotenberg during the first year of the initiative. We would also like to acknowledge the contribution of Phil Davis, who provided crucial advice during our experiments with statistical approaches to measuring OpenURL metadata quality. Trademarks, Services Marks Wherever used in this technical rep
20、ort, all terms that are trademarks or service marks are and remain the property of their respective owners. NISO TR-05-2013 vi NISO TR-05-2013 1 1 Introduction 1.1 Purpose and Scope The purpose of the IOTA (Improving OpenURL Through Analytics) project was to analyze the quality of the metadata that
21、is passed to the link resolver from the OpenURL source and develop a standardized metric for such quality evaluation. The project focused most of its attention on a specific genre of OpenURLsthose intended to provide access to journal articles. Essentially there are three parts to OpenURL linking: t
22、he metadata in the incoming OpenURL, matching metadata in the OpenURL to the librarys knowledge base, and constructing accurate links into content provider websites. The quality of the data in the link resolver knowledge base itself was outside the scope of IOTA. Also outside of the scope was the qu
23、ality of the linkages between link resolvers and full-text content providers. A related NISO initiative, Knowledge Base And Related Tools (KBART), is concerned with accurate knowledge base content in the link resolver. Standardizing the link syntax between the link resolver and content provider rema
24、ins unaddressed by any industry effort. Chandlers 2011 Against the Grain article describes the relationship between these initiatives in more detail. 1.2 Terms and Definitions The following terms, as used in this technical report, have the meanings indicated. Terms in boldface in a definition indica
25、te the term is also defined in this section. Term Definition A the higher the value the more important the element. Enhanced OpenURL The set of OpenURL elements available after the link resolver enhancers have been run on the incoming OpenURL. Typically an Enhanced OpenURL will have more data elemen
26、ts than the original OpenURL. enhancer An automated process that enhances an OpenURL by using internal and external sources to supplement the OpenURL data elements. An example would be an enhancer that looks up article-level metadata from CrossRef using the DOI presented on an OpenURL. fail Describe
27、s the state of an OpenURL that does not generate any item-level links to full-text items. See also success. NOTE: Within the context of this technical report the following are not considered links to full-text items: links to a journal homepage, the table of contents for an issue, or a search page a
28、t the vendor site. full-text target link A link to the complete textincluding all references, figures, and tablesof an article on the target site. If the referenced item is a journal article, the full-text article link would direct the user directly to that article at the content providers site with
29、out requiring further navigation or searching. NISO TR-05-2013 3 Term Definition knowledge base A database used with OpenURLs that contains information about what targets are available to users of the link resolver. Data within the knowledge base includes but may not be limited to link syntaxes and
30、holdings with coverage details. The link resolver environment for a given institution can be customized to reflect that institutions collection and to only provide links to targets to which the library subscribes. link resolver Technology that controls the linking between sources and targets. The li
31、nk resolver accepts and deconstructs the OpenURL describing a content item from a source and uses its knowledge base and associated programs to determine full text and other targets appropriate for the user and create predictable links to these. The role of the link resolver is context sensitive lin
32、king to the appropriate copy of a content item. OpenURL As defined in ANSI/NISO Z39.88-2004, The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services, a URL designed to transport metadata and thus enable linking from information resources such as abstracting and indexing databases (sources) to library s
33、ervices (targets), such as academic journals, whether online or in printed or other formats. The linking is mediated by link resolvers, or link-servers, which parse the elements of an OpenURL and provide links to appropriate targets available through a library by the use of a knowledge base. Source:
34、 Wikipedia boldface notation added PubMed ID A unique identifier assigned to a record in the PubMed databases (www.pubmed.org). A PubMed record typically describes an article or other content item. Using a PubMed ID it is possible to look up descriptive metadata of the content item through a free on
35、line service provided by the National Library of Medicine. referrer The identity of a website or discovery platform that is the source of the OpenURL. In an OpenURL this is represented as the SID (Source ID) or the Referrer ID. In some contexts, referrer is used interchangeably with source. required
36、 data elements The data elements that must be available to create a successful link to an OpenURL target. For example, if a publishers link to a full-text article is constructed from ISSN, Volume, Issue, and Start Page values, then these fields are considered required data elements since the link wi
37、ll fail to access the full text if any one of them is missing. NISO TR-05-2013 4 Term Definition source The website where the user discovered an item of interest and from which the OpenURL was initiated. The source is identified by the Referrer ID. In some contexts, source is used interchangeably wi
38、th referrer. success Describes the state of an OpenURL that is able to generate an item-level link to one or more full-text items. The link generated is intended to populate the link resolver menu; however, the designation of “success” does not guarantee a user will get to the full-text item if the
39、link is followed all the way to the full-text content providers site. See also fail. Success Score A value attributed to an OpenURL based on its success in generating a link to one or more full-text items. If the OpenURL generates a link to a full-text item, it is given a Success Score of 1; if not,
40、 the Success Score is 0. target The website where the full text resides and where the user will be linked to view the item via the link resolver. Example targets could include content in publisher platforms, institutional catalogs or repositories, and content gateways. 2 IOTA Use Cases 2.1 Librarian
41、 Use Case OpenURL linking is a core service for libraries around the world. For example, over 439,000 OpenURL requests were sent to Cornells link resolver in 2012. One estimate is that across the world more than three million requests per day are sent to resolvers (MacColl, 2009). Patrons expect Ope
42、nURL links to take them to the item they are requesting: the full text online. “The most common theme related to expectations of full text: 49 percent expressed disappointment at not finding full text online for their citations” (Wakimoto, et al., 2006). A more recent study confirms that perception,
43、 finding that: “end users who click on an OpenURL menu do so in order to find the full text of an article. As this and other usability studies have shown, end users focus on the links to the full text available online and overlook links to additional options such as catalog links, help text, and eve
44、n information, such as the journals peer-reviewed status that they find important.” (Ponsford, et al., 2011) While it is true that not every citation sent to a librarys link resolver is for an item the library holds in its collection, it is imperative that for those the library does hold in its coll
45、ection the link resolver leads the user to the item without frustration. NISO TR-05-2013 5 2.2 Content Provider Use Case The primary target users of the IOTA quality reports are OpenURL providers interested in using the reports to monitor and improve the OpenURLs they send out to link resolvers acce
46、ssed by library patrons so that when they click on the OpenURL, the links successfully go to the providers platforms. During the project, both the American Institute of Physics and the Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) both reached out to the IOTA Working Group and used the resources availa
47、ble in IOTA to make an assessment of their OpenURLs. 2.3 Link Resolver Use Case OpenURL referring data is fragmentary and often contradictory. Different publishers and referring sources will often portray the same piece of content in radically different ways, some mutually incompatible but equally c
48、orrect. In cases such as this, what data should be treated as authoritative? Cataloging principles govern bibliographic representation of electronic resources, but not at this level of granularity. In other instances, referring sources are sending metadata that is downright wrong or misleading. Foll
49、owing a traditional user-focused software development approach in which problems are reported as “bugs” and treated as one-time fixes can easily lead to a situation where multiple users can request changes that work contrary to one another. As an example, the philosophy adopted by the Serials Solutions 360 Link team to tackle this situation has been referred to as “incremental improvement.” Using current resolver technology, there is no way to ensure that 100% of links produced will be successful, since successful link resolution depends on the proper functi
