Hi Thought I might try to answer my own question about rationale of and purpose for DOIs.
One planned use for DOIs would be as active links to an on-line version of the reference, as mentioned at the bottom of the following piece: http://equinoxjournals.com/ojs/equinoxdownloads/doicitations.pdf I input a set of 12 references into the program Chris mentioned. It found two DOIs. When I clicked on the DOI links it went to the article site, but the actual articles required $ or login as licensed user. Presumably, DOIs as links to articles would primarily be of use in an institutional environment with licensed access. I'm not sure how or whether that would work if one were clicking on DOIs outside of some proprietary system like PsycINFO. If I simply print a PDF of the data returned by the CrossRef DOI system, the links are not active. The numbers themselves need to be embedded in html code to function. And when I copied the entire data and tried to paste it into a wordprocessor, the reference format was messed up. Perhaps there is a way around this? There does appear to be some mercenary motives also at work (but of course the whole publishing enterprise is in the "make money" business). See: http://doi.contentdirections.com/eps/sieck1.pdf http://doi.contentdirections.com/eps/sieck2.pdf Naturally, all of this is not free ... there are charges to acquire a DOI. Which leads one to wonder how all of this will integrate with Open Access efforts? About which there has been discussion: http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1155.html Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca >>> "Jim Clark" <j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca> 24-Oct-09 11:27:45 PM >>> Hi If a full reference is adequate to produce a DOI, if available, then doesn't that mean that the DOI is redundant and unnecessary to find the article? The rationale for this requirement really escapes me, which leaves one in the unfortunate position of having to say to students: "do it because the APA Style guide says to do it." On an empirical note, is there any evidence that people were retrieving incorrect articles given the information available in past editions? Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca >>> "Christopher D. Green" <chri...@yorku.ca> 24-Oct-09 7:18:53 PM >>> Here's some good news from those of you who were dreading having to cut and paste dozens of DOI numbers into your reference sections starting in January. It is a website that allows you to enter a list of reference, and if gives you back the references with all available DOI numbers appended: http://www.crossref.org/SimpleTextQuery/ Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
