Category Archives: sfx link resolver

sfx link resolver

sfx link resolver

New in MPG/SFX: "View this record in Web of Science"

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Wouldn’t it be nice if the MPG/SFX service menu for a specific journal article includes a link to the corresponding record in the Web of Science – to provide you with an easy option to lookup cited references, citing articles and related publications? It took us a while to implement, but we finally came up with this:

screen shot of new sfx service
Example MPG/SFX menu: http://tinyurl.sfx.mpg.de/q45l

The target title ("Web of Science") links to the appropriate full record view and the "Times Cited" count to the citing articles page in the Web of Science (WoS). Please note that access to the WoS database requires a subscription, but all users from the Max Planck Society should have access from their workplace.

The above information is fetched on request by using Thomson Reuters new Links Article Match Retrieval Service (AMR). Our implementation for SFX is a bit preliminary and the service fails to identify the WoS record under certain circumstances (e.g inaccurate or incomplete metadata). Some detailed testing will be done next week, but your feedback is always welcomed!

sfx link resolver

MPG/SFX got deep indexed by Google

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End of 2008 we noticed that the Googlebot started to deep crawl the MPG/SFX link resolver by following distinct OpenURLs. This finding was surprising because we haven’t expected any free available website to promote deep links to dynamic pages created by the MPG/SFX server. There are some indicators that the assumption could have been wrong, e.g. Yahoo’s Site Explorer meanwhile counts 5,365 Inlinks to "sfx.mpg.de" in total. This deserves some additional checking!

In addition, I just learned from a post on the Google webmaster blog, that the web form offered by the MPG/SFX Citation Linker could have been used to crawl the server as well. But this is not very obvious because I’m pretty sure that Google doesn’t rate MPG/SFX as a "high-quality site".

The cause remained undetermined; however, the number of requests from Googlebot had significant impact on the statistics created for the SFX service. Therefore, we refined the robots.txt last December to disallow indexing of the relevant directories and started to forget about it… until today. Today, we learned from a feedback that any Internet user may accidentally stumble about an empty MPG/SFX menu and doesn’t feel well served – which is totally understandable. Unfortunately, it looks like Google’s index still includes a high amount of links to "sfx.mpg.de":
Google search result

Hm, it looks like modifying the robots.txt is not a very straightforward way to remove content from Google. Meanwhile, we used the URL removal request tool offered by Google Webmaster Tools. Let’s see if this will reduce the number of superfluous requests.

resources, sfx link resolver

One week, two new OpenURL sources

Sometimes, it’s really worth asking content providers for OpenURL support – even it may take some time and effort to identify the appropriate contact person. This week was pay-off time and we activated links to the MPG/SFX link resolver on two additional information platforms:

  • Credo Reference has been licensed recently to provide MPG staff with full text access to 150 reference books. OpenURL links to the MPG/SFX server are offered for the references in selected articles, see example.
  • BioOne launched a new platform some weeks ago and mentioned "Open URL compliance" in the the corresponding announcement. The revised user interface provides OpenURL links for all literature cited (see example), but the implementation requires some improvements – in particular for books and book items.

Time to start the weekend!

sfx link resolver

Linking to Elsevier’s ScienceDirect: advanced troubleshooting

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Last week a user reported that he was asked for a login while trying to access a specific full text via a link provided by the MPG/SFX server. "A typical IP access problem", I hear you say, but the issue became more complicated soon. Further debugging indicated that

  1. the full text was available on Elsevier’s ScienceDirect platform and the user was able to access it by browsing to the article directly.
  2. the local librarian was correctly guided to the full text as she entered the same OpenURL and followed the steps taken by the user.
  3. the doi link created by the MPG/SFX link resolver was redirected to Elsevier’s Article Locator, but the intermediate page was displayed to the librarian only.
  4. the website selection screen enables users to "learn" which websites they use by setting a browser cookie:

Elsevier's Article Locator

… and that was exactly what happened to our user. Arriving to Elsevier’s Article Locator for the first time, he accidentally selected the "wrong" website and by doing so he removed the ScienceDirect platform from his preferences. Afterwards, he was not able to return to the intermediate page because he was automatically redirected to the article in his "preferred" Elsevier website.

Allowing users to set preferences is a commendable idea in general, but this implementation falls a bit short. While trying to access a full text, scientists do not read instructions very carefully, but attempt to click through as fast as possible. With setting cookies by default, they may unintentionally been pushed into a dead end.

After clarifying the problem, it was easy to provide a solution: The user could either open Elsevier’s preference page to update his website selections or delete the cookies stored by his browser.

But this issue was an important lesson for us SFX administrators as well. We need to avoid intermediate screens whenever possible, e.g. by configuring institutional preferences. Elsevier offers a cookie pusher for this task. The MPG/SFX link resolver already use it under certain conditions, but the implementation needs to be extended.

sfx link resolver

How many browser windows would you like?

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Over the last 6 months, we received some contradictory feedback regarding where the MPG/SFX server should open the options offered in the service menu (e.g. the link to the electronic full text). Currently, a click on a service name opens a new browser window to load the external location. All links use a named target window, thus whenever you choose another service, this should open in the same window.

From our users’ feedback we learned that this preference is not shared by everyone. Some users suggested to open a new window with each click, while others requested that SFX shouldn’t open new browser windows at all. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to follow the experts’ recommendation ("Place users in control") in this case, because the MPG/SFX menu does not contain "real" hypertext links. Instead, clicking a service name submits a web form which calls a script to generate the appropriate target URL according to the information available. Therefore, well known browser short cuts (like the context menu) are not available to the experienced user.

However, we want to match the user’s expectation and therefore consider to offer various options. An example is available on the MPG/SFX test instance (check the additional buttons new and “blank”).

Any thoughts or feedback is highly appreciated….

sfx link resolver, tools

Citation Linker has grown up

Most of you have already been introduced to the Citation Linker which is a simple tool to access MPG/SFX services for a known reference by entering information manually. The number of monthly SFX requests per sources prove that the Citation Linker (“CITATION”) is very frequently used and therefore it was not really surprising to receive enhancement requests for this tool.

Your wish is our command! Please welcome two additional tabs on the citation linker form:
screen shot of tabs in citation linker

  • Chapter helps you entering data for items published in a book, see example.
  • Patent allows the location of issued patents and patent applications, see example.

Please note that only a limited number of services are available for the two object types, especially for patent literature. But maybe adding the tabs will lead to more requests related to these genres which would be a good reason to add additional services. Let’s see…

COinS, question and answer, sfx link resolver

Bringing MPG/SFX buttons to your reference list?

Two questions from my mail inbox today:

Can I add MPG/SFX buttons to my individual reference list? And if yes: Does this make any sense?

The answer to the first question is straight forward: Yes, you can link every reference to the corresponding MPG/SFX service menu. This requires you to create OpenURL links including all relevant bibliographic information and to add these links to the HTML code of your reference list. Our OpenURL generator (in German) may help you with this task.

But there is no definitive answer to the second question. Obviously, a link to the MPG/SFX resolver is especially helpful to staff of the Max Planck Society because the menu will offer relevant services for this specific target group. But users outside the MPG IP ranges are not assisted in such a comfortable way. The only help provided is a link to OCLC’s OpenURL Resolver Registry which can be used to redirect the request to a local resolver.

If you want to share your reference list with the public, you may consider adding COinS alternatively. COinS (“ContextObjects in Spans”) provide a measure to embed bibliographic information into the HTML code of a web page. Afterwards, the information can been used by your browser to display links to an OpenURL link resolver (such as MPG/SFX) or to download the record into a reference manager.

Further reading:

resources, sfx link resolver

Activating reference links on HighWire Press

Some time ago, we learned that the HighWire Press platform supports the activation of OpenURLs in the reference sections of selected journals. This allows us to link these references to the corresponding MPG/SFX service menus, e.g.:

screen shot of reference section in PNAS

Users from MPG will now find MPG/SFX links on following HighWire-hosted journal platforms:

Please note that OpenURL links are currently displayed for selected journal references only, but Oxford University Press already announced:

Future releases will include functionality to display OpenURL links for a wider range of references (for example, books) as well as additional metadata fields in OpenURL-encoded links (e.g. issue values).

… that sounds promising!