OpenURL Quality

Migration to new parser, db structure, UI done

2011-10-21T10:10:00.001-07:00

Jim Wismer and I have finished migrating to the new parser, database structure (which now includes ‘article’, ‘book’, and ‘other’ categories), and user interface.

In the course of integrating the new article completeness index, I noticed some places where I could reduce some of the complexity in the UI; I believe the new version it is easier yet more powerful.

Please try it out if you have a chance. If you find bugs let me know.

http://openurlquality.niso.org/select.php

Thanks,
Adam

EDINA: OpenURL + open data = interesting possibilities

2011-06-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

EDINA have released a fascinating dataset derived from their OpenURL Router service. The data has been made available under an ODC-PDDL licence with BY-SA community norms which allows it to be reused by anyone with an interest in the data. [More from JISC]

IOTA @ NASIG 2011: presentation posted on Slideshare

2011-06-12T08:01:00.000-07:00

Session title: NISO's IOTA Initiative: Measuring the Quality of OpenURL Links
Location: Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark, St. Louis, MO
Date: Saturday, June 4, 2011, 10:30am to 12pm

IOTA Preprint: 2010 Charleston Conference Proceedings

2011-05-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

Rafal Kasprowski and Susan Marcin. "NISO’s IOTA Working Group: Creating an Index for Measuring the Quality of OpenURL Links". 2010 Charleston Conference Proceedings. Preprint (2,600 words).

IOTA Presentation @ UKSG Conference, April 4-6, 2011

2011-04-30T14:07:00.000-07:00

As reported earlier, IOTA presented on its OpenURL quality initiative at the 2011 UKSG Conference. The presentation is available online on Slideshare.

2.5 Million New OpenURLs added to IOTA

2011-04-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I loaded another 2.5 million OpenURLs to the IOTA repository. First quarter 2011 data came from Cornell and EBSCO. I also loaded 2010 fourth quarter data from our newest provider, McGill University Library (thanks to Heather Cai for making their data available to IOTA).

EDiNA: Using OpenURL Activity Data

2011-04-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

Summary

This project will take forward the recommendations of the Shared OpenURL Data Infrastructure Investigation to further explore the value and viability of releasing OpenURL activity data for use by third parties as a means of supporting development of innovative functionality that serves the UK HE community.

Duration

Phase 1: November 2010 – January 2011
Phase 2: February – July 2011

http://edina.ac.uk/projects/Using_OpenURL_Activity_data_summary.html

Against the Grain article: NISO IOTA: Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics, in Context

2011-04-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

Here is a preprint of the article I submitted to Against the Grain. I think it has been published by now.

http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/19495

D-Lib March/April 2011: Towards Transparent and Scalable OpenURL Quality Metrics

2011-04-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

D-Lib Magazine

March/April 2011
Volume 17, Number 3/4
Table of Contents

Adam Chandler, Glen Wiley. Jim LeBlanc
Cornell University Library

doi:10.1045/march2011-chandler

Abstract

The development of link resolvers and the OpenURL framework over a decade ago paved the way for open-ended, context-sensitive linkage from databases, indexes, and abstracting services to the appropriate resources and services to meet library users' needs. Library patrons can now retrieve more comprehensively linked scholarly information than ever before. However, even with today's link resolver technology and the OpenURLs on which the link resolvers depend, following a reference link all the way to full-text can still frustrate library users all too often. In this article, the authors present research on why OpenURLs fail so frequently. They also describe a model for measuring the quality of OpenURL metadata, using a log processor and reporting software. The results of this study demonstrate the potential applicability of such a system as a scalable, stand-alone service for all libraries, OpenURL and full-text content providers, and link resolver vendors to evaluate and improve the completeness and consistency of their links.

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march11/chandler/03chandler.html

Presentation: NISO IOTA (Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics), in Context

2011-03-03T13:04:00.000-08:00


Other Titles:	Presentation at Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference 2011
Authors:	Chandler, Adam
Keywords:	openurl metrics
Issue Date:	2-Mar-2011
Abstract:	Description of tools the NISO IOTA (Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics Working group are developing to make dynamic reference linking more effective.
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/1813/22295

Article on NISO IOTA in eLucidate (UKeiG)

2011-02-12T14:55:00.000-08:00

This article on NISO IOTA was published recently in the eLucidate publication of the UKeiG (UK eInformation Group):

The NISO IOTA Project: Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics
Elizabeth Winter, Electronic Resources Coordinator, Georgia Tech Library

IOTA @ NASIG 2011

2011-01-29T11:36:00.000-08:00

IOTA will be discussed during a Strategy Session at the Annual NASIG Conference:

Session title: NISO's IOTA Initiative: Measuring the Quality of OpenURL Links
Location: Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark in St. Louis, Missouri
Date: Saturday, June 4, 2011, 10:30AM to Noon

IOTA at ALA Midwinter 2010

2010-12-09T12:09:00.001-08:00

ALCTS-CRS Continuing Resources Standards Update Forum
Sunday, January 9, 2011, 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Hilton Bayfront, Aqua 314

LITA Standards Interest Group
Saturday, January 8, 2011 • 4:00 – 5:30 pm
San Diego Marriott and Marina, Encinitas Room

ALCTS-CRS Holdings Update Forum: Holdings Information in E-Content Access
Saturday, January 8, 2011
San Diego Convention Center, Room 30 C
NISO IOTA Presentation (long) by Oliver Pesch, EIS (PPT)

LITA ERM Interest Group
Friday, January 7, 2011 • 4:00 - 5:15 p.m.
San Diego Convention Center, Room 25 C
NISO IOTA Presentation (short) by Oliver Pesch, EIS (PPT)

NISO AVIAC Meeting
Friday, January 7, 2011 • 10:00 - 11:00 a.m.
San Diego Marriott and Marina, Del Mar Room

IOTA at UKSG 2011

2010-11-26T20:02:00.000-08:00

IOTA is scheduled to present twice at the next UKSG conference:

UKSG 34th ANNUAL CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION
Harrogate International Centre, 4-6 April 2011
King's Road, Harrogate, North Yorkshire HG1 5LA, UK

Group B sessions:
Tuesday, 5 April, 15.15 -16.15
Wednesday, 6 April, 11.00 - 12.00

IOTA discussed in ALA's latest Library Technology Report

2010-11-15T21:17:00.000-08:00

The IOTA project is described in the October 2010 Library Technology Report “Rethinking Library Linking: Breathing New Life into OpenURL,” (vol. 46, no. 7) as an important effort to try to determine the quality of OpenURL links by focusing on how they are generated in source citation databases.

IOTA at Charleston Conference: Friday, 2:00 - 2:50 pm

2010-11-03T05:47:00.000-07:00

FRI C1 2:00 PM – 2:50 PM NISO's IOTA Working Group: Creating an Index for Measuring the Quality of OpenURL Links

Location: Francis Marion, Parkview Room Thread: TE
Speakers: Rafal Kasprowski - Rice University; Susan Marcin - Columbia University
Presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/rkaspro/niso-iota-openurl-quality-index-charleston-2010

The IOTA (Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics) Working Group has been formed by NISO (National Information Standards Organization) in January 2010 to develop a community recognized index for measuring the quality of OpenURL links generated by content providers (http://www.niso.org/workrooms/openurlquality). Too often OpenURL links do not work as expected, and although the OpenURL standard was introduced a decade ago, no systematic method has been implemented to benchmark them.

The proposed system accepts OpenURLs and returns scores based on a set of evaluation metrics. These scores would allow resource providers to see precisely where their OpenURLs are weakest, letting them target metadata improvement efforts in the most cost-effective manner. A working, public reporting system with 8 million OpenURLs is already in place. IOTA's work builds on an earlier project at Cornell University funded by the Mellon Planning Grant and is supported in the KBART Phase I Recommended Practice Report.

After an overview of OpenURL linking and related problems, this presentation will discuss how IOTA's OpenURL scoring system works and explain how it can benefit the parties who rely on accurate data provided by link resolvers, i.e., content providers, subscription agents, knowledge base and link resolver developers, and libraries.

Also covered will be IOTA's interactive reporting system for analyzing submitted OpenURLs (http://openurlquality.niso.org); a wiki that documents IOTA's progress and includes a preliminary OpenURL glossary (http://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/oq/); and a blog that tracks IOTA news and presentations (http://openurlquality.blogspot.com/).

The session is meant to help the wider community better understand the problems it is experiencing with OpenURL linking and to familiarize it with the OpenURL quality index, a tool designed to reduce these problems. Audience members can keep abreast of the group's progress through the wiki and blog, and participate in the development and fine-tuning of the index by submitting their OpenURLs to the reporting system.

The DOI doesn’t always lead to the appropriate copy

2010-10-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

Following the NISO webinar earlier this week, Margery Tibbetts, University of California, cautioned us about how we weight the DOI element in the completeness index we are developing:

Subject: NISO OpenURL presentation

Hi Elizabeth and Adam,

Thank-you for the IOTA presentation during the NISO openURL webinar this morning.

When you were talking about weighting elements the presentation implied that DOIs could receive a high weight. In my opinion you need to think about this very carefully. If the OpenURL only contains the DOI and your link resolver fetches metadata from CrossRef the metadata returned is limited and I have found cases where it is incorrect. The DOI doesn’t always lead to the appropriate copy, it leads to the publisher’s copy. One case we have encountered is the IET titles in the IEEE Xplore system. The IEEE Xplore system uses DOIs for article level linking to their content but the IET DOIs resolve to the publisher and not the IEEE Xplore system so we had to come up with a work around.

The workaround:

We deactivated the IET titles in the IEEE Xplore target and created a new target for the IET titles which uses the IEEE target parser but doesn’t do the CrossRef lookup. Since the IET title list, including title changes, is relatively small this was a workable solution. One of the engineering librarians work with us to identify the titles.

Margery

Results of Link Failure Poll from Oct. 13 Webinar

2010-10-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

During the October 13 NISO Webinar, "It’s Only as Good as the Metadata: Improving OpenURL and Knowledgebase Quality", my colleague Elizabeth Winter asked the audience of some 169 three questions about OpenURL quality. Here are the results I quickly wrote down.

Poll Q1: Your opinions on this statement: “A significant problem for link resolvers is the generation of incomplete or inaccurate OpenURLs by databases (for example, A&I products).”

Strongly Agree: 32%
Agree: 51%
Neutral/Don’t Know: 14%
Disagree: 1%
Strongly disagree: 0%

Poll Q2: How often do your patrons experience problems with OpenURL links?

Daily: 45%
Weekly: 32%
Monthly: 14%
Never: 0%

Poll Q3: What do you think causes the most problems with OpenURL links?

Incomplete or poorly constructed OpenURLs: 38%
Errors in link resolver knowledge base: 38%
Errors in link-to-syntaxes: 3%
Other: 0%
Don’t know: 20%

NISO’s October webinar--It’s Only as Good as the Metadata: Improving OpenURL and Knowledgebase Quality

2010-09-13T12:59:00.000-07:00

Date: October 13, 2010
Time: 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. (Eastern time)

ABOUT THE WEBINAR:

OpenURL is inextricably entwined with modern information services supplied by, among others, libraries, resource providers, and system vendors. All of these constituents and the end users whom they serve rely on the accuracy and dependability of OpenURLs to bring information within easy reach; ideally, within two mouse clicks. But the services powered by OpenURLs can be brought low quickly by one or more errors within the citation data and/or the OpenURL encoding itself. Such errors can leave librarians mystified, resource providers puzzled, and users unhappy at a service's failure to deliver, yet they are all too common.

NISO’s October webinar--It’s Only as Good as the Metadata: Improving OpenURL and Knowledgebase Quality—discusses several efforts in place or underway to ensure the quality of OpenURL data and the knowledgebases that OpenURL links depend on. Is anyone keeping watch over the accuracy and dependability of OpenURLs? Are resource providers and system vendors held accountable for their applications of the OpenURL standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.88)? What can librarians do to bring these problems to the attention of their suppliers?
This webinar will address these and other issues of OpenURL accuracy in both theory and practice.

SPEAKERS AND TOPICS:

• IOTA: Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics Elizabeth Winter, Electronic Resources Coordinator, Georgia Tech Library Adam Chandler, Database Management and E- Resources Librarian, Cornell University Library will join Elizabeth during the Q&A portion of this event.

• KBART: Knowledge Bases and Related Tools Sarah Pearson, E-Resources & Serials Coordinator, University of Birmingham

• OpenURLs and Knowledge Base Quality: Collecting and Improving Knowledge Base Data Maria Stanton, Director of Content Operations, Serials Solutions

REGISTRATION
Registration is per site (defined as access for one computer). NISO and NASIG members may register at a discounted rate. A student discount is also available.

Can't make it on the scheduled date or time? Registrants receive access to the recorded version for one year, which can be viewed at your convenience.

For more information or to register, visit the event webpage:
http://www.niso.org/news/events/2010/metadataquality/.

NISO IOTA Open Teleconference September 13

2010-09-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

Please mark your calendars to attend today's NISO Open Teleconference call, to be held from 3-4 p.m. (eastern), focusing on the NISO IOTA (Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics) Project. The IOTA Working Group -- originally known as the OpenURL Quality Metrics Working Group -- was begun in early 2010 as a two-year project to look at the feasibility of creating industry-wide, transparent and scalable metrics for evaluating and comparing the quality of OpenURL implementations across content providers. A website hosting the analytics to date (nearly 9 million OpenURLs analyzed), with support information, can be found at http://openurlquality.niso.org/; in addition, the IOTA project can be tracked via Twitter at http://twitter.com/nisoiota and via the blog at http://openurlquality.blogspot.com/. In this call, learn more about the project and the current work from working group member Elizabeth Winter, who will be joined by Adam Chandler, the IOTA group chair, for further discussion.

This Open Teleconference conversation is part of an ongoing series of month calls held on the second Monday of each month (barring holidays) as a way to keep the community appraised of NISO's activities. It also provides an opportunity for you to provide feedback to NISO on our activities or make suggestions about new activities we should be engaging in.

The call is free and anyone is welcome to participate in the conversation. To join, simply dial 877-375-2160 and enter the code: 17800743.

Best,
Karen

NISO Open Teleconference: IOTA
Monday, September 13, 2010
3:00 p.m. (eastern)
Tel.: 877-375-2160
Conference code: 17800743#

http://www.niso.org/news/events/2010/telecon/

some IOTA progress ...

2010-07-30T12:26:00.001-07:00

1. Earlier this week, Rafal and Susan submitted their IOTA proposal to Charleston Conference.
2. This morning I loaded a log file into our system for Claremont Colleges from Jason Price (KBART member, incidentally).
3. Today I updated the user interface to reflect the decisions we made in our last call (i.e., “source vendor” and “source database”).
4. This week I created a twitter account for IOTA: @nisoiota . Karen kindly created a square version of the IOTA log for it. Today I configured widgets to display tweets containing the hash tag #nisoiota and embedded it to http://openurlquality.niso.org/ and http://openurlquality.blogspot.com/. If you use twitter please “follow” @nisoiota. Also, you can promote our work AND publish your thoughts to the website and blog simply by including #nisoiota in your tweets.

Thanks,
Adam

iota qr code

2010-07-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

Measuring the Quality of OpenURL s: An Interview with Adam Chandler

2010-06-30T12:26:00.000-07:00


Authors:	LeBlanc, Jim
Keywords:	openurl,, metrics
Issue Date:	May-2010
Publisher:	National Information Standards Organization
Citation:	LeBlanc, Jim (2010). "Measuring the Quality of OpenURL s: An Interview with Adam Chandler." Information Standards Quarterly (22), Issue 2.
Abstract:	NISO’s Business Information Topic Committee approved in December 2009 the establishment of a new working group called IOTA—Improving OpenURL Through Analytics. Chaired by Adam Chandler, E-Resources & Database Management Research Librarian in Central Library Operations at Cornell University, the working group will build on work previously conducted by Adam at Cornell. Jim LeBlanc, Director of Delivery & Metadata Management Services and Adam’s colleague at Cornell, talked to him about the work he had already done and the follow-up project at NISO.
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/1813/15142
ISSN:	1041-0031

IOTA Poster Session @ ALA Annual 2010

2010-06-18T12:12:00.000-07:00

Sunday, June 27, 2010
3:00 - 4:30 p.m.
Washington Convention Center
Exhibit Hall Aisles 800-900-1000

Please come visit. Here's a link to the brochure we'll be distributing.

Presentation: "Inherent Dependencies in the OpenURL Reference Linking Model"

2010-03-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to the presentation, "Inherent Dependencies in the OpenURL Reference Linking Model," that I am giving this on March 23, at the NISO Discovery to Delivery: Creating a First Class User Experience seminar in Atlanta.

NISO OpenURL Quality Initiative Working Group

2010-03-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to write a post about my great colleagues in the NISO OpenURL Quality group. I'm really grateful to have them on board.

Edward Dutton, Ithaka/JSTOR/ARTstor
Rafal Kasprowski, E-Resources Librarian, Rice University
Susan Marcin, Licensed Electronic Resources Librarian, Columbia University
Oliver Pesch, Chief Strategist, E-Resource Access and Management, EBSCO Information Services
Ellen Rotenberg, Manager, Product Development, Thomson Reuters
Elizabeth Winter, Electronic Resources Coordinator, Georgia Tech Library
Jim Wismer, Thomson Reuters

Presentation: "Transparent and Scalable OpenURL Quality Metrics"

2010-02-02T11:59:00.000-08:00

Here is a to the talk I am giving this afternoon at the 2010 er&l conference.

NISO Approves Two-Year OpenURL Quality Initiative

2009-12-18T12:30:00.000-08:00

This proposal was reviewed and approved by the Business Information Topic Committee on Tuesday, December 8, 2009. As this project focuses specifically on the testing and validating of the metrics used to determine OpenURL Quality, and not on the OpenURL standard itself (ANSI/NISO Z39.88-2004, ANSI/NISO Z39.88 - The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services), it was determined that this work falls under the umbrella of the Business Information Topic Committee. However, this committee will work closely with the Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee -- which provides oversight to the related OpenURL standard and NISO/UKSG KBART Recommended Practice -- to keep them informed on progress and to solicit feedback on the work when needed.

Link

debugging in a complex system of inter-related components

2009-12-07T07:48:00.000-08:00

Johnathan Rochkind wrote a good description of the complexity involved in trying to fix linking problems: "But this got me thinking again about something I’ve been thinking about for a while, the added difficulty of tracking down bugs in the complex inter-related ‘chains’ of software that more and more are responsible for providing our library services — chains of software from various sources, hosted in various places, open source and licensed and free-with-no-contractual-support whatsoever ..." continued

Citation Errors

2009-11-25T06:43:00.000-08:00

"Errors can creep into citations in many ways, including import of incorrect citations from another source, mispelling of author names, or simple miskeying. DOIs are particularly vulnerable to miskeying, due to their length and meaninglessness. One of my sources estimates that 20% of author keyed DOIs in citations are incorrect! If you have the opportunity to decide on the form of a DOI, don't forget to consider the human factor.

It's hard to get estimates of the current error rate in citation metadata; when I was producing an electronic journal ten years ago, my experience was consonant with industry lore that said that 10% of author-supplied citations were incorrect in some way. My guess, based on a few conversations and a small number of experiments, is that a typical error rate in published citations is 1-3%. A number of processes are pushing this number down, most of them connected with citation linking in some way."

- Eric Hellman, "Publish-Before-Print and the Flow of Citation Metadata"

CrossRef 10th Anniversary Video

2009-11-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

A demonstration of transparent and scalable OpenURL quality metrics for use in promoting metadata consistency across content providers

2009-10-16T12:14:00.001-07:00

View more presentations from alc28.

Towards OpenURL Quality Metrics: Initial Findings

2009-07-12T05:39:00.000-07:00

View more presentations from alc28.

Experimental OpenURL Quality Web Reporting System

2009-07-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to the experimental metrics reporting system I am working on right now: <http://vichummert.org/oq/>

Results of Mellon funded L’Année philologique OpenURL Quality Investigation

2009-06-26T07:08:00.000-07:00

The research I am doing now is a continutation of a Mellon funded planning grant: here is a link to the OpenURL quality report section. It describes the approach I am taking.

Towards OpenURL Quality Metrics: Initial Findings

2009-06-19T10:13:00.000-07:00

Presentations at the 2009 American Library Association Annual Conference

ABSTRACT: The OpenURL standard is a widely deployed technology to facilitate linking to resources across the library supply chain. The OpenURL formatted URL carries the data about an item to the link resolver of the library. The resolver compares the metadata embedded within the OpenURL with what is held in the library’s collection and presents the available options in a results page. For a book, there is usually a link to the library’s catalog card; for an article, ideally this is a link directly to the full-text of the article. At a typical academic library thousands of OpenURL requests are initiated by patrons each week. The problem is, too often these links do not work as expected, leaving patrons frustrated by a lower than desired quality of service. In this presentation Adam Chander will share early findings from an investigation into the feasibility of creating industry wide metrics for evaluating and comparing the quality of OpenURL implementations across vendors.

Venues:

ERM Interest group
Friday, July 10, 6:30 - 8:30
Location: Palmer House, Chicago Room

Continuing Resources College and Research Libraries Interest Group
Saturday, July 11, 10:30-12.00.
Location: TBA