Michael Fosmire makes some good points, but the issue isn't whether DOI is
understandable. It is common human experience that what is understandable to
some, won't be understandable to others. The issue to my mind is whether a
user-friendly, simpler citation scheme can co-exist with the DOI. We all know
that for at least a century people cite publications incorrectly, using just a
volume number, issue number, and begining and ending pages. It seems so simple,
yet how many times have you dealt with erroneous citations? Therefore replacing
that already imperfect scheme with a longer DOI citation format involving more
numbers will be problematic. The longer the citation format, the more
opportunity you give someone to get it wrong. I don't see how that changes with
online ejournals; correct me if I am wrong. A solution would be to replace
sequential pagination (which people mess up as we all know) with an even simpler
article numbering scheme as Henry Hagedorn suggested, in order to keep it
simple. I can reach his ejournal's online article on the Web simply with
" insectscience.org/2.7 " as the URL.
Dunkov, B.C., Georgieva, T., Yoshiga, T., Hall, M., Law, J.H. 2002.
Aedes aegypti ferritin heavy chain homologue: feeding of iron or
blood influences message levels, lengths and subunit abundance. 10
pp. Journal of Insect Science, 2.7. Available online:
insectscience.org/2.7
=============================================================
Peter Brueggeman, Director, Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library
UCSD, 9500 Gilman Dr, Dept 0219, San Diego CA 92093-0219 USA
pbrueggeman@ucsd.edu Tel 858/534-1230 Fax 858/534-5269
----- Original Message -----
From: "Judy Holoviak" <JHoloviak@agu.org>
To: <asli@www.lib.noaa.gov>
Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 8:29 AM
Subject: <asli> another view on AGU's position on DOI
: 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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