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Electronic Journals: A Selected Resource Guide

(archival resource, no longer maintained)

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Standards

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) held a workshop on February 20, 2000, to determine the perceived need for standards and "best practice guidelines" for electronic journals. While the group did not propose any concrete recommendations for new standards, it did stress the need for cooperation among all parties involved, and the need to protect the literature for future generations. The report of this workshop is found at http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshops/e-jrnl-report.html.

Despite the lack of standards specifically targeted at e-journals, there are a number of technical standards that come to bear on the publication of e-journals and access to them. A bibliography of pointers to resources on digital library standards can be found at: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Info/standards.html (Digital Library Standards, from the University of California at Berkeley's Digital Library SunSite). Recent discussions have concentrated on the areas of Metadata, Identifiers and traditional cataloging. Two emerging standards under development are the OpenURL, to facilitate reference linking, and ONIX for Serials, a metadata standard, to support business applications in the serials publication sector.

Metadata

"Metadata" is the term that has gained acceptance for what librarians have always referred to as "cataloging". But metadata functionality goes beyond the cataloging functions of description and access, to include content rating for filtering out sensitive or objectionable material, the linking of physically separate information objects, and description of intellectual property rights of electronic publications.

http://www.ifla.org/II/metadata.htm

Digital Libraries: Metadata Resources. This resource directory, maintained by IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) contains a thorough collection of links to resources on all aspects of metadata for digital libraries, international in scope.

http://www.niso.org/news/Metadata_simpler.pdf

Hodge, Gail. Metadata made simpler. Bethesda, Maryland: National Information Standards Organization, 2001.

http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/cathro3.html

Cathro, Warwick. "Metadata: An Overview." Paper given by Dr. Warwick Cathro, Assistant Director-General, Services to Libraries Division at the Standards Australia Seminar, "Matching Discovery and Recovery" August 1997.

http://purl.org/metadata/dublin_core/

OCLC's extensive and ongoing coverage of the Dublin Core metadata element set. The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set has recently been approved as a NISO standard, and will be made freely available at http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/Z39-85.pdf.

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december00/weibel/12weibel.html

Weibel, Stuart, and Traugott Koch. "The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative: Mission, Current Activities, and Future Directions." D-Lib Magazine,Vol. 6, No. 12 (December 2000).

http://www.editeur.org/onixserials.html

"ONIX for Serials." September 20, 2001. The preliminary report on the development of ONIX for serials, an XML-based metadata standard for transmitting information about serial products.

Identifiers

The library and publishing worlds have always maintained identification schemes for locating and tracking titles, including LCCN, ISBN, ISSN, and Call numbers. Identifying individual print items, such as journal issues or articles, has been more difficult, but the identifier can still be linked to a physical piece. In the online world, identifying items becomes more difficult because the items are no longer physically tied together (bound, as it were). Individual journal articles need to be identified as "digital objects"; in fact, the article itself may consist of a number of digital objects (text, images, sound bites, links to citations, etc.) We have to start thinking of information not as discrete physical units like books or articles but as a web of objects without clear boundaries, not necessarily stored in the same location. Relevant recent standards for identifying objects, digital and otherwise, are the SICI (Serial Item and Contribution Identifier) code and the DOI® (Digital Object Identifier). Schemes for persistent names for Internet addresses have also been developed, most notably OCLC's PURL (Persistent URL) system, CNRI's Handles, and the OpenURL.

http://www.arl.org/newsltr/194/identifier.html

Lynch, Clifford. "Identifiers and Their Role In Networked Information Applications." ARL: a bimonthly newsletter of research library issues and actions, Issue 194 (October, 1997). An excellent overview by the executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information, untangling the recent controversy over digital identifiers.

http://www.bic.org.uk/uniquid.html

Green, Brian, and Mark Bide. "Unique Identifiers: a Brief Introduction," published by Book Industry Communication in March, 1997.

http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v01/i03/Cameron/

Cameron, Robert D., "Towards Universal Serial Item Names," Journal of Digital Information, Vol. 1, Issue 3 (October, 1998). A detailed and fairly technical proposal for an identifier that can be used for human as well as machine communication. This paper gives an excellent review of the requirements of identifiers.

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/SICI/

"SICI : Serial Item and Contribution Identifier Standard." History of the SICI, and pointers to the standard itself. The standard document is also freely available at http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/Z39-56.pdf.

http://www.doi.org/

The DOI® is covered thoroughly at the web site of the International DOI Foundation (IDF). The IDF regularly publishes discussion papers on issues and activities involving the DOI®, including http://www.doi.org/handbook_2000/index.html (Paskin, Norman, "The DOI® Handbook," February, 2001).

http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/Z39-84.pdf

Syntax for the Digital Object Identifier. Bethesda, Maryland: National Information Standards Organization, May 20, 2000. This standard defines the format for the DOI®.

The DOI is the cornerstone of the CrossRef project, discussed under "Reference linking" in this document.

http://purl.oclc.org/

OCLC maintains this site to introduce the Persistent URL.

http://www.handle.net/index.html

This site describes the Handle System for persistent internet names developed by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives. The Handle System is the underlying technology for the DOI Resolver.

http://www.sfxit.com/OpenURL/

http://www.niso.org/committees/committee_ax.html

The OpenURL is a protocol that allows for linking to the "appropriate copy" of an electronic resource. This is covered more fully in the section on Reference Linking. NISO has appointed a standards committee to develop the OpenURL standard.

Cataloging

Electronic publications still need to be cataloged in the traditional sense in local library catalogs.

http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/lbcat.htm

Bailey, Charles W., Jr. "6.1 Cataloging, Classification, and Metadata." in Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography. Houston: University of Houston Libraries, 1996-. This section has many helpful pointers to resources on cataloging and metadata issues.

http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v7/n1/ande7n1.html

Anderson, Bill, and Les Hawkins. " Development of CONSER Cataloging Policies for Remote Access Computer File Serials." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review Vol. 7, No. 1 (1996). A detailed discussion of the issues involved in cataloging internet serials, with examples. There is also a brief history of electronic journals. The CONSER Cataloging Manual, Module 31, Remote Access Computer File Serials, is found at http://www.loc.gov/acq/conser/module31.html.

http://www.purl.org/oclc/cataloging-internet/

Olson, Nancy B., ed. Cataloging Internet Resources: A Manual and Practical Guide, 2nd ed. Dublin, OH: OCLC, This hands-on guide, containing plenty of examples, was originally developed to aid those participating in the OCLC/U.S. Department of Education-funded project, "Building a Catalog of Internet Resources." It was designed for OCLC users and other project participants but it enjoys general usefulness (from the Introduction).

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