The following appeared on a listserve of the Science and
Technology Section of the Association of College and Research
Libraries. Michael Fosmire has given me permission to post it to
other lists.
The AGU Publications Committee has carefully considered the
points raised and the chair is in the process of preparing a
response.
Judy Holoviak
Deputy Executive Director and
Director of Publications
AGU
>
> Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 19:04:22 -0500 (US Eastern Standard Time)
> From: Michael Fosmire <fosmire@purdue.edu>
>
> There are many issues on which AGU and I disagree on their ejournal
> implementation. However, using DOI's is not one of them. One publisher
> that has implemented the DOI in a format similar to AGU is the American
> Physical Society--which has consistently been a leader in the development
> of electronic publishing.
>
> The DOI does have a logical format, and once you see it, it shouldn't
> be horribly difficult to reproduce. For example, APS has this as a sample
> DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.65.041001. The first number is the publisher
> identifier, the second is the journal title, the third is the volume
> number, and the last one is, first the issue number, then the article
> number. It isn't much different than a volume, page number citation style
> once you break it down. AGU's DOI doesn't look much different, with their
> publisher number, a year-indicator, a two-letter journal abbreviation, and
> then an article number. It doesn't seem that misquoting an article number
> is that much more difficult than misquoting some page numbers (certainly
> that's the biggest error I see in citation checking)--and with the DOI the
> publisher can automatically check for those errors more easily than with a
> non-DOI citation. Physicists have been citing arXive preprints
> for several years without too much trouble, and I think authors are
> flexible enough to adapt to new citation styles.
>
> AGU is actually ahead of the curve in this respect, and I imagine other
> publishers will follow suit in the coming years. You have to think in the
> new paradigm of an e-first document. Animations and data sets have no
> reality as a page number. Furthermore, since web publishing allows the
> end user some flexibility in how they recieve the data, page length can
> differ from one user to another...not to mention different formats (for
> example, HMTL vs. PDF versions of an article can yield different article
> lengths). What is meant by a page number thus becomes increasingly
> meaningless.
>
> Also, I see a change in how citations are being done. With a DOI you
> can drag and drop citations from the source paper into the paper you are
> writing, so errors don't accrue since there is no manual transcription of
> citation data. Publishers also can more easily link a DOI than a citation
> based on the paper page numbers--faster, more automated link creation, so
> we can surf from the paper to its references (and indeed to future
> articles that cite the paper). Instead of having the editors or a
> computer program try and translate a paper number-based citation into its
> DOI equivalent, it would certainly be easier if the DOI was given to begin
> with.
>
> As librarians complain that publishers keep raising prices, we should be
> applauding those publishers that are attempting to streamline the editing
> process--the dollars saved are those that don't come out of our pockets.
> Faster, cheaper, increased functionality comes without that much added
> cognitive overhead for the authors.
>
> Rather than excoriate AGU for moving to the DOI, they should be
> applauded for their foresight and willingness to follow the trail broken
> by APS (in 1999 or thereabouts as near as I can remember). There will be
> some growing pains as we transition to a new citation style (and authors,
> indexers, and librarians will feel it), but, once it does become the
> dominant citation pattern, the old page number citation will seem as
> strange as the DOI does now.
>
> Anyway, just some opinions on the matter.
>
> -M.
>
> Michael Fosmire
> Science Librarian
> 1530 Physics Building
> Purdue University
> West Lafayette, IN 47907-1530
> Phone: 765-494-2859
> Fax: 765-494-0706
> fosmire@purdue.edu
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