Scholar-Friendly DOI Suffixes with JACC: Journal Article Citation Convention

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Scholar-Friendly DOI Suffixes with

JACC: Journal Article CitationConventionRobert D. CameronSchool of Computing ScienceSimon Fraser University

CMPT TR 1998-08

March, 1998

Copyright 1998, Robert D. Cameron. See the Copyright section.

Contents

AbstractI. Introdu ctionII. JACC: The Basics

III. Multi ple Art icles Per PageIV. Articles in Unpaginated Electronic JournalsV. Conclusion

Abstract

JACC (Journal Article Citation Convention) is proposed as an alternative to SICI(Serial Item and Contribution Identifier) as a convention for specifying journalarticles in DOI (Digital Object Identifier) suffixes. JACC is intended to provide avery simple tool for scholars to easily create Web links to DOIs and to also supportinteroperability between legacy article citation systems and DOI-based services. Thesimplicity of JACC in comparison to SICI should be a boon both to the scholar andto the implementor of DOI responders.

I. Introduction

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system is a developing new standard for theglobally unique identification of published digital content based on a publisher-oriented model. The first part or prefix of a DOI identifies a content publisher usinga numeric code assigned by a central registry, while the second part or suffix of a
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DOI identifies a particular content item using a publisher-specified string [ DOI ]. Toavoid unnecessary limitation on possible applications of the DOI as well as to allowpublishers maximum flexibility in developing their own DOI processing systems,very few restrictions have initially been placed on the nature of the publisher-specified string. In this regard, the DOI suffix deliberately follows the "simple" or"dumb" identifier model, as opposed to the "compound" or "intelligent" identifiermodel that would impose a highly-structured coding system for contentidentification [ Paskin ][GreenBide ].

A significant drawback of the simple suffix model of the DOI is that it greatly limitsinteroperability between newly deployed DOI systems and legacy systems thatidentify content in some other way. In recognition of this point, there is adeveloping convention that the suffix of a DOI may be a compound stringconsisting of the name of an existing identification standard in square brackets (for

example, [ISBN] for International Standard Book Number or [SICI] for Serial ItemContribution Identifier) followed by a legal identifier of that standard [ Unicorn ].

In the important area of journal article citation, however, the use of the existingSICI standard in the DOI suffix may be costly and of limited value. In general,SICI uses a complex coding scheme involving ISSN, chronology, enumeration,pagination, title code, derivative part identifier, medium format identifier, standardversion and check digit. Coding for chronology and title code is particularlycomplex and error-prone in a variety of special cases. Depending on the availableinformation, many different (correct and incorrect) SICIs could potentially be

generated for any particular article. SICIs may also be ambiguous, at an estimatedrate of one duplication per million assigned SICIs in the 1996 version of thestandard [ SICI ]. Compounding these difficulties is the fact that SICI has failed toachieve widespread use in article citation applications generally. Hence, evenassuming that a SICI-based DOI suffix is implemented, the interoperabilityachieved thereby may be quite limited.

At the same time, there is another notion of interoperability that ought to beconsidered, namely the ability for researchers, students, bibliographers and others toeasily create World-Wide Web links to articles. In this regard, one might consideranyone who is citing a work to be acting in the role of a scholar and hence thegreatest interoperability might be achieved by citation conventions that are "scholar-friendly". The notion of scholar-friendliness as a requirement for documentidentifiers has been considered at length in the proposal for Universal Serial ItemNames [ USIN ]. In essence, the argument is that scholars will prefer short,mnemonic identifiers that are easy to generate from standard bibliographicinformation and that employ a common and conventional syntax. The Link Managerof the American Physical Society is an example of one publisher implicitlyrecognizing the value of a scholar-friendly approach to linking [ APS-LM ].

Such scholar-friendly linking conventions may be of direct benefit to publishers in a

number of ways. First of all, direct linking to DOI response pages from web pages
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of various kinds may be a valuable form of free advertising. Secondly, manypublishers are considering the incorporation of active citations as an importantvalue-added feature in the electronic versions of papers [ Hunter ]. In this regard, theability to create links in a simple, scholar-friendly manner may also reducepublisher costs. Thirdly, publisher efforts to support the needs of scholars in linkingactivities may have a positive and commercially valuable effect on image orprestige. Finally, in the implementation of DOI response technology, a simplescholar-friendly convention for DOI suffixes may be far less expensive than analternative based on SICI.

The purpose of this paper then is to propose Journal Article Citation Convention(JACC) as a limited convention for citation of journal articles in a DOI suffix. It islimited in the sense that it is proposed specifically as a convention that applies in themost common cases, but not as standard with all the complexity necessary for a

universal citation identifier scheme. In this regard, JACC is designed to be a handytool that a publisher may use if it does the job. If not, the publisher still has thefreedom to implement the DOI suffix using any other scheme, conventional or not.In accepting limits on its applicability, JACC retains a simplicity that maximizesscholar-friendliness and minimizes implementation difficulties for a preponderanceof journals.

Section II of this paper introduces the basic JACC structures for identification of legacy articles by page of occurrence in a print journal. Section III addresses theprimary problem with page-based identification: the possibility of ambiguity when

more than one article starts on a page. The JACC notation for publications inunpaginated electronic journals is discussed in section IV. Section V concludes.

II. JACC: The Basics

The initial focus of JACC is identification of an article by its appearance in a printpublication. This is perhaps ironic in support of "digital object" identification, but isalmost universally appropriate for legacy objects and will continue to be applicablefor a great many newly published objects that are either published in both print anddigital form or are published in a digital form that retains the concept of pagination.

The following syntax represents the basic JACC method of article identification for journals paginated by volume.

[JACC] : @Here may either be a journal ISSN or a mnemonic code for the

journal specified by the publisher, is the volume number in which thearticle appears and specifies the first page number of the article.

Consider, for example, citation of the article "A Behavioral Notion of Subtyping" byBarbara H. Liskov and Jeannette M. Wing appearing in ACM Transactions onProgramming Languages and Systems , volume 16, number 6, (November 1994),
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pages 1811-1841. This journal is widely known in the computing sciencecommunity by the acronym TOPLAS, and that acronym uniquely denotes this

journal in the space of ACM publications. As publisher, the ACM might thendesignate that TOPLAS is to be used as the preferred . In this event,the full DOI suffix for this citation would be [JACC]TOPLAS:16@1811 . This citationis scholar-friendly in several ways. It uses the commonly known mnemonic for the

journal and the mnemonic value of the at-sign to indicate the page number at whichthe article starts. It is brief, avoiding any redundant information entry. It uses thepublication numbering that uniquely specifies this article and that would be found inany correct bibliographic citation of the article.

Although it is recommended that publishers specify mnemonic codes for journalswherever possible, the JACC convention is that journal specification by ISSN isalways acceptable. For example, the ACM should also accept [JACC]0164-0925:16@1811 as a DOI suffix equivalent to the more mnemomic form above. Theuse of the ISSN in this way should permit almost universal interoperability withlegacy bibliographic database systems. Of course, if the publisher does not define amnemonic code for the journal, then the ISSN must be used.

In the event of print publications that are paginated by issue instead of by volume,JACC uses issue numbers in parentheses.

[JACC] : ( )@ Parentheses have mnemonic value for designating issue numbers because of theiruse in some common bibliographic styles. Furthermore, the grouping action of parentheses is beneficial to avoid misinterpretation of combined enumeration. Forexample, the DOI suffix [JACC]SL:32(3/4)@17 might be used by Haworth for thearticle "Govzines on the Web: A Preachment" by Joe Morehead, appearing inSerials Librarian , volume 29, nos. 3/4, 1997, pp. 17-30.

In the case of journals paginated by volume, JACC allows inclusion of issuenumbers, but does not require it. Scholars may well specify issue numbers even incases where they are not required. Indeed, it may not always be clear from abibliographic citation whether the issue number is required or not. Accepting but notrequiring issue numbers in this case should maximize both scholar-friendliness and

interoperability with legacy systems.

In this initial version, JACC is deliberately focussed on those serials which follow aconventional two-level (volume, issue) enumeration structure. The premise is that asimple-to-implement system that is widely applicable will result in the fastestpossible deployment of scholar-friendly DOI responder systems. Furthermore, thegoal is to freeze the syntax for two-level serials so that publishers may confidentlydeploy responders without fear of future incompatibility problems. Ultimately,compatible conventions for serials with more complex and/or less conventionalenumeration structures should be developed. However, for those that follow the

conventional two-level structure, the burden of implementation of more complex


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DOI responder technologies can be avoided.

III. Multiple Articles Per Page

The issue of identification ambiguity that arises when two or more articles start on asingle page is a small but thorny one. The SICI standard addresses this problemthrough the use of a title code, consisting of the initial letter of each of the first sixtitle words. However, complexities arise in the presence of punctuation, foreigncharacter sets and special symbols. The rules can be easily misinterpreted resultingin incorrect SICI codes. Furthermore, the use of a title code does not actually solvethe problem in all cases; consider the possibility of two articles on the same pageboth with a single title word starting with the same letter.

Under JACC, distinction between multiple articles on a page is handled by thesimple device of appending a lower-case alphabetic designation, a to denote the firstarticle on the page, b for the second article, and so on. For example, following thisconvention, the Association for Computing Machniery could specify the two DOIsuffixes [JACC]CACM:38(1)@43a and [JACC]CACM:38(1)@43b , respectively, for thetwo short articles "Women and Computing in the UK" by Alison Adam and"Announcing a New Resource: The WCAR List" by Laura L. Downey, bothappearing on page 43 of Communications of the ACM , volume 38, number 1(January 1995). For completeness, the remote possibility of more than 26 articlesper page is accomodated under JACC by using the specifications aa for the 27tharticle, ab for the 28th article, aaa for the 677th article, and so on. Furthermore, inorder to have a uniform rule for enumerating articles on a page, JACC specifiescolumn-major order, first enumerating all articles top-to-bottom in column 1, thenmoving on to column two and so on.

In essence, the use of the alphabetic designation under JACC is equivalent to theuse of sequence numbers in the APS Link Manager [ APS-LM ].

The principal problem with disambiguation of articles within a page by sequentialposition is that standard bibliographic citations do not provide the informationnecessary to determine article count within a page. This problem should be

considered from the two perspectives of its effect on link construction by scholarsand interoperability concerns for legacy bibliographic systems.

In linking to an article by volume and page number, a scholar will not normallyknow when an alphabetic suffix is needed and hence will typically omit it in thefirst instance. However, a DOI responder can provide almost full functionality inthis case by simply returning a response page that lists all of the articles that beginon the cited journal page. If the scholar checks the action of the link, the ambiguitycan be caught and resolved. If not, when a reader of the scholar's work traverses thelink, they can nevertheless be given a useful response page which leads to thedesired article with only one step of indirection.
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When a citation from a legacy bibliographic system is converted to a DOI using theJACC notation, it will also be typical that any required alphabetic suffix is omitted.However, if this conversion occurs in an on-line article access system, then it

imposes at worst one additional step of indirection as above. If the conversion ispart of an automatic document delivery system, a reasonable response may be tosimply return the set of all articles starting on that page. Other applications mayfollow similar approaches, interpreting the DOI either as an incomplete articlespecifier that requires interactive resolution or as an article set specifier for all thearticles starting on that page. In this regard, the most important thing to avoid is theerrors that may be caused by making an inappropriate default assumption, forexample, that an omitted suffix by default is interpreted to designate the first articleon the given page.

IV. Articles in Unpaginated Electronic JournalsIn the present period of experimentation with a variety of formats for e -journalpublication, it may be somewhat risky to propose a "convention" for citation of e-articles. Nevertheless, JACC does include a notation for e -journals based on theobservation that e-journals commonly have "contents pages" that list articles eitherby volume or by issue. Thus, the JACC notation uses sequential article number inthe contents page as the basis of identification.

[JACC] : $ [JACC] : ( )$

For example, the University of Michigan Press might choose to use the DOI suffix[JACC]JEP:3(2)$4 to denote the fourth article on the "contents page" of Volume 3,Number 2 of the Journal of Electronic Publishing(http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/03-02/ ), namely the article "Solving the Dilemmaof Copyright Protection Online" by Bill Rosenblatt. Although the JACC choice of the dollar sign ( $ ) to denote is somewhat arbitrary, one canexpect that scholars will learn to mnemonically associate this symbol with theconcept of numbering from the contents page. For mnemonic value, the numbersign ( # ) might have been a better initial choice, but this symbol requires a ratherscholar-unfriendly encoding when DOIs are used in URLs.

From a publisher's perspective, adoption of the JACC e-journal notation ought to bea fairly low-cost solution. The major implication is that journal contents pages needto be maintained in a stable and well-organized fashion. Article numbers shouldeither be shown directly on the page or the page should be formatted so thatcounting is straightforward. If a publisher chooses to incrementally update contentspages as new articles are published, the JACC notation can still be used so long asnew articles are always added at the end of the list. The principal benefits inadopting the JACC convention will be ease of implementation of DOI respondersand the intangibles that flow form supporting the linking activities of scholars.
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From the scholar's point of view, article identification by contents-page count willbe an initially unfamiliar concept. Other schemes, such as article identification byauthor surname, might be considered more mnemonic and are already being used bysome e-journals in URL construction. However, these schemes vary by journal andalways leave open potential problems of ambiguity. The JACC viewpoint is that themost scholar-friendly approach is the one that requires scholars to learn only asingle identification concept for the great majority of cases.

V. Conclusion

JACC is a simple tool proposed to help publishers create scholar-friendly linkingsupport in their DOI suffix systems. Although simple, the conventions of JACC areapplicable to virtually all (print or electronic) journals that use standard volume or

(volume,issue) based enumeration. The simplicity of JACC, particularly incomparison to the SICI alternative, should be a boon both to publishers in the easeof implementation of DOI responders and to scholars in the ease of learning andremembering the linking conventions.

Further development of JACC may be contemplated along the lines proposed by theUniversal Serial Item Name (USIN) scheme [ USIN ], of which JACC is essentiallya small, fixed subset. However, those developments should be carried out in anupwards-compatible fashion so that no additional implementation burdens areplaced on publishers who adopt this version of JACC.

Copyright

Copyright 1998, Robert D. Cameron. Permission to copy for individual use ispermitted. Multiple copies may be made for use in classrooms, discussion groups,or committee meetings, provided that notice of the intent and extent of the copyingis sent to the author (e-mail is satisfactory). Reproduction or republication in anygeneral distribution medium is not permitted without explicit consent of the author.All copying requires that the integrity of the paper be preserved and that thiscopyright notice be reproduced in full.

References

[DOI]DOI Foundation, "A Guide to Using Digital Object Identifiers", October 10,1997. URL: http://www.doi.org/guidebook/guidebook.html .

[Paskin]Norman Paskin. "Information Identifiers", Learned Publishing, Vol 10, No. 2,April 1997, pages 135-156. URL:http://www.elsevier.com/inca/homepage/about/infoident/Menu.shtml .

[GreenBide]
http://www.elsevier.com/inca/homepage/about/infoident/Menu.shtmlhttp://www.doi.org/guidebook/guidebook.htmlhttp://users/kpumuk/convert/2/432354-434650.html#USIN


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Brian Green and Mark Bide. "Unique Identifiers: A Brief Introduction", BookIndustry Communication, London, 1997. URL:http://www.bic.org.uk/bic/uniquid .

[Unicorn]Mark Bide, "In Search of the Unicorn: The Digital Object Identifier from aUser Perspective", British National Bibliography Research Fund Report, BookIndustry Communication, London November, 1997. URL:http://www.bic.org.uk/bic/uncorn2.pdf .

[SICI]National Information Standards Organization. Serial Item and ContributionIdentifier (SICI): An American National Standard Developed by the NationalInformation Standards Organization: Approved August 14, 1996 by theAmerican National Standards Institute. National Information Standards seriesANSI/NISO Z39.56-1996 (Version 2). NISO Press, Bethesda, Maryland,1997. URL: http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/SICI/ .

[USIN]Robert D. Cameron. "Towards Universal Serial Item Names", TechnicalReport TR 97-16, School of Computing Science, Simon Fraser University,December 3, 1997. URL: http://elib.cs.sfu.ca/USIN/USIN.html .

[APS-LM]American Physical Society, "Frequently Asked Questions about the APS linkmanager", 1998. URL: http://publish.aps.org/linkfaq.html

[Hunter]Karen Hunter, "Adding Value by Adding Links", Journal of Electronic

Publishing, Volume 3, Number 3, 1998. URL:http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/03-03/hunter.html
http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/03-03/hunter.htmlhttp://publish.aps.org/linkfaq.htmlhttp://elib.cs.sfu.ca/USIN/USIN.htmlhttp://sunsite.berkeley.edu/SICI/http://www.bic.org.uk/bic/uncorn2.pdfhttp://www.bic.org.uk/bic/uniquid

Scholar-Friendly DOI Suffixes with JACC: Journal Article Citation Convention

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