RFP: Innovative uses of CrossRef Metadata

[Amy Brand <abrand@crossref.org>]

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS: INNOVATIVE USES OF CROSSREF METADATA

CrossRef is now accepting proposals for the most original and
promising use of CrossRef's article-level metadata as part of a
scholarly research/authoring tool or related library service.

Free access to participating publishers' metadata and DOIs will
be granted to the researcher or librarian whose proposal is
selected.

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS:  July 15, 2007

WHAT TO SUBMIT:

1) A short but thorough description of the service you would like
to create using the CrossRef metadata, including estimated
implementation time

2) Links to software/services/protocols/standards that you may
have implemented in the past

3) Your CV

TO WHOM:

Amy Brand, PhD, Director of Business & Product Development
email: abrand@crossref.org

By submitting a proposal, you agree to any publicity about the winning
project that CrossRef may wish to pursue.

BACKGROUND ON CROSSREF METADATA AND WEB SERVICES

CrossRef is an independent membership association, founded and
directed by publishers. CrossRef helps connect users to primary
research content by enabling publishers to work collectively. Our
citation-linking network today covers over 27 million articles=
and other content items from several hundred scholarly and
professional publishers.

CrossRef Web Services, or CWS, offers an easy-to-use suite of
tools for authorized partners to collect metadata on a
cross-publisher basis to streamline their own crawling, indexing,
and linking services. One way to access the 27 million+ metadata
records now registered in CrossRef is via our OAI-PMH (Open
Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) interface.
The CrossRef OAI-PMH repository interface serves as the central
point for the distribution of metadata from participating
publishers, utilizing a robust and widely adopted technology
targeted at consumers of large quantities of metadata. Access to
the CrossRef's metadata repository is controlled by IP
authentication and can be tailored to provide specific content
from select publishers to each authorized recipient.

The metadata in CrossRef's database consists of basic
bibliographic information for each item, including author(s),
title, journal name, ISSN, volume, issue, page, and DOI-URL pair.
Here are links to some sample CWS metadata:
<http://www.crossref.org/oai-handler_sample.xml>,=20
<http://www.crossref.org/oai-pmh_sample2.xml>

Our data repository is extensive but highly variable in quality
from publisher to publisher. We have recently begun to take
measures to ensure higher quality metadata. Any suggestions you
may have regarding how best to achieve a higher level of data
quality and consistency, as part of your proposal or otherwise,
would be greatly appreciated. Different but similarly basic
metadata is collected for other types of content. In addition,
many publishers now also deposit references as part of their
metadata.

CONTACT:  Please email abrand@crossref.org with any questions you
may have about CrossRef Web Services or this RFP.

<http://www.crossref.org/03libraries/RFP_CrossRef_metadata.html>