IEEE is a large organization with 380,000 members that publishes technical papers and other materials. It partnered with CrossRef to provide DOIs and metadata for its publications accessible through IEEE Xplore, its digital library. IEEE worked to prepare its metadata and reference coding to maximize linking to other publications. It now deposits thousands of articles monthly with CrossRef and uses parameter passing to enable special access arrangements with partner organizations.
1. Reference Linking:
A Primary Publisher Case Study
Society for Scholarly Publishing
Linking Seminar
28 May 2003
Stephen P. Cohen
s.p.cohen@ieee.org
IEEE Publications
Director, Content Engineering
2. Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers
• 380,000 members in 150 countries
• 40 Engineering Societies and Technical
Councils in electrical engineering &
related fields, e.g.,
– Computer and software engineering
– Biomedical engineering
• Members are:
– Engineers, scientists and researchers
working in industry and academia
– Undergraduate and graduate students
3. IEEE Services
• Sponsors technical conferences,
symposia, and meetings worldwide
• Promotes industry standards
• Provides a range of educational
programs
• Publishes nearly 30% of the world’s
technical papers in electrical,
electronics and computer engineering
4. IEEE Publishes a Variety of
Technical Material
• 85 Transactions & Journals
• 31 Specialized Magazines
• 350 Conference Proceedings Annually
• 24 - 30 Books each year
• 31 newsletters
• IEEE Spectrum
• The Institute
• Proceedings of the IEEE
5. IEEE Xplore® - IEEE’s Digital Library
• Common platform for IEEE’s institutional
subscribers and members
• All IEEE Transactions, Journals,
Conferences & Standards
– Backfiles to 1950
– Nearly 950,000 articles
– Over 4,000 publication titles
• Discipline specific packages
• www.ieee.org/ieeexplore
6. CrossRef Is Vital to Expanding
Access to IEEE Content
• Registering IEEE Xplore® content
– 200,000 Transactions & Magazine articles
– 500,000 Conference articles
• Began Transactions deposits in 2001
• Began Conference deposits in 2002
• Began outbound linking (CrossRef
queries) in 2003
– Only for Transactions articles
7. Preparing to Deposit Content
• Assembled a team of area experts
• CrossRef- & IEEE-specific documentation
• Joined CrossRef Technical Working
Group
– Founding member of CrossRef
• Began assessment of CrossRef meta-data
requirements & the state of IEEE meta-
data
8. IEEE Reviews CrossRef
Meta-data Requirements
• IEEE Xplore® meta-data database had
most article info per Cross Ref specs
• IEEE had to normalize data
– Map special characters to their UNICODE
equivalents
– Abbreviated titles not part of IEEE
database
– Add DOI field
– IEEE developed scripts to finesse data
9. Defining the DOI Suffix
• Assumed that suffix would be a “dumb”
as opposed to an “actionable identifier”
– Should be “user friendly”
• For expediency DOIs for existing content
were assigned at time of CrossRef
deposit
– Based on IEEE-internal numbering scheme
• Articles are now assigned DOIs when
they arrive at IEEE for publication
10. Defining Workflows
• Legacy data vs. new data
– Diagramed the workflows
• Legacy meant writing a script to scan
data base and extract article & journal
meta-data
• New data deposits are triggered by
updates to IEEE Xplore® data base
– Coordinate with delivery to partners
11. IEEE Prepares to Query
CrossRef Meta-data Database
• More complex process
• Requires local cache for resolved
references
– Query charge for every hit
– Don’t want to pay twice for same meta-data
– Question: How often to refresh cache?
• Requires coded references to facilitate
extracting data for queries
– IEEE journals are all SGML/XML-coded
12. Richly Coded References are Key
• Reference coding must be specific
enough to support extracting query
values
– Distinguish between IEEE and non-IEEE
journals; only query for non-IEEE articles
• Vendor hired to enrich references from
one of IEEE’s content providers
• Outbound linking only from Transactions
13. Reference Validation
• Maximizing hit rate for CrossRef MDDB
queries depends on
– Existence of meta-data in the MDDB
– Accurately coded references
• Going forward IEEE will validate
references at the author proof stage
– Query IEEE databases (local cache, etc.)
– Authors can be asked to check references
that should have resolved but did not
14. IEEE CrossRef Statistics
• Article meta-data deposits (average
Jan – April 2003)
– Journals: 1618 per month
– Conferences: 4055 per month
– Total: 5673 per month
• Journal article queries (Dec 2002
through March 2003)
– Queries submitted: 23,857
– Successful matches: 7,073
– Hit rate ~ 30%
15. IEEE Uses Parameter Passing For
Special Linking Arrangements
• IEEE Societies exchange meta-data
(including DOIs) with non-IEEE Societies
– ACM & IEEE Computer Society agreed to
allow member access to each other’s digital
libraries
• Users who subscribe to both secondary
publishers & IEEE Xplore® may link
directly (without authentication) to IEEE
Xplore subscribed content
16. What is Parameter Passing?
• A common framework defining the
syntax for information appended to a
URL
– Based on OpenURL
• To work with DOIs
– DOI resolver must recognize parameters &
attach to the URL associated with the DOI
• Target publisher site must be able to
understand & act on parameters
17. Examples of IEEE Use of
Parameter Passing
• Problem: IEEE CS DOIs resolve to
IEEE Xplore® not CS Digital Library
– IEEE (not Computer Society) is copyright
holder
• Parameters added to the IEEE CS DOIs
from ACM tells IEEE Xplore to pass the
URL (and parameters) on the the IEEE
Computer Science Digital Library
18. ACM & IEEE Computer Society
ACM
Digital Library CS article DOI + parameters
DOI Directory
(IEEE CS
meta-data)
Xplore URL + parameters
IEEE
CS Digital Library URL + parameters
Computer Society IEEE Xplore®
Digital Library
19. Future Uses of Parameter Passing
• Easier to provide partner-specific
services on IEEE Xplore®
– Automatic authentication
• Rapid implementation of bi-lateral
linking arrangements
– Eliminates the need for custom
arrangements on a publisher by publisher
basis
