Metadata and reference linking

Abstract

Reference linking is a broad term that generally means linking from one information object to another. The specific types of linking which have been addressed in most detail in recent years are those having to do with the links between journal articles. These would include the links from citation metadata to the electronic full-text article and links from references following an article (the bibliography) directly to the referred citation and/or article. A basic concept is that there must be a way to identify the work to be 'linked-to.' A second concept is that in order to 'link-to' an outside system, there must be an identifiable syntax, which often includes an identifier, for creating a query into that system to find the correct article. In this paper we focus on experiences in linking from an A&I database record to full-text and linking from a bibliography to full-text. Accomplishing this required implementing a system that uses metadata to determine the identifiers and the required elements for various 'link-to' syntaxes across disparate systems. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.