NISO's IOTA initiative: Measuring the quality of OpenURL links

Abstract

The Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics (IOTA) initiative was formed by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) in 2010 to continue a Mellon-funded project on OpenURL quality begun at Cornell University. IOTA's objective is to develop a scoring system for measuring the quality of OpenURL links generated by content providers at the citation level. OpenURLs have a history of failing to resolve correctly, but no method has been devised to benchmark them even a decade after the introduction of the underlying standard. The proposed system would generate scores based on specific evaluation metrics and thus rate providers' OpenURL quality. The system's analytical approach would also enable OpenURL providers to pinpoint linking problems and thus optimize OpenURL improvements. A public OpenURL analysis tool, which relies on link data contributed by OpenURL providers and libraries, is currently in use. Recently, IOTA approached the Knowledge Bases And Related Tools (KBART) initiative about a possible collaboration on a related project, which would investigate OpenURL linking not at the citation level, but the full-text level. © The North American Serials Interest Group, Inc.