CrossRef Goes Live

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

Contact:
Susan Spilka
(212) 850-6147
sspilka@wiley.com

CrossRef Goes Live
Journal Reference Linking Service Membership Roster Grows to 33 Publishers

Burlington, MA. June 5, 2000. Ed Pentz, Executive Director of CrossRef,
today announced that the first links enabled by the collaborative
reference-linking service have been activated on the World Wide Web.

"CrossRef is now well on its way to becoming the comprehensive source for
linking journal articles. The reference links that researchers want and
need are starting to appear," said Mr. Pentz. A demonstration of the live
reference links can be accessed at
http://www.crossref.org/demos/gallery.htm.

Mr. Pentz reported that as of today, ten of the member publishers have
submitted more than 1.3 million article records in about 2,700 journals to
CrossRef's Metadata Database. Submission of the records is the first step
of the multi-step process; CrossRef members then use this information to
enable the links from references in their journal articles to other
publishers' content.  Approximately 1,100 journals now have live reference
links enabled by CrossRef; examples are Biochimica et Biophysica Acta
(Elsevier), Brain Research (Elsevier), Cancer (Wiley), European Journal of
Biochemistry (Blackwell), Journal of Comparative

Neurology (Wiley), Journal of Investigative Dermatology (Blackwell),
Journal of Molecular Biology (Academic), Journal of the Association for
Research in Otolaryngology (Springer), and World Journal of Surgery
(Springer). CrossRef enabled links will appear in a few different formats,
depending on the preferences of each publisher (for example, CrossRef
button or Article in html). In the coming weeks and months, a constantly
increasing number of records will be submitted and live reference links
will appear.

According to Mr. Pentz, eleven publishers have recently joined CrossRef,
bringing the current total to 33 member publishers. These include:

          American Chemical Society
          American Geophysical Union
          American Physical Society
          Annual Reviews
          Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
          British Medical Journal
          CAB International
          British Medical Journal
          CAB International
          Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE)
          Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
          The Royal Society
          Thieme Verlag

Active discussions are underway with many more scientific and scholarly
primary journal publishers to expand this broad-based, industry-wide
initiative, which was initially announced in November 1999.

CrossRef is operated under the aegis of the not-for-profit organization
jointly formed by the member publishers and incorporated as PILA. Its
Board of Directors includes Eric A. Swanson, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
Chairman (NYSE:JW.a); Pieter Bolman, Academic Press, Treasurer (NYSE:H);
Michael Spinella, AAAS; Marc Brodsky, American Institute of Physics; John
R. White, Association for Computing Machinery; John Strange, Blackwell
Science; John Regazzi, Elsevier Science (NYSE:ENL)(NYSE:RUK); Anthony
Durniak, IEEE; Jeffrey K. Smith, Kluwer Academic Publishers; Stefan Von
Holtzbrinck, Nature Publishing Group; Martin Richardson, Oxford University
Press; and Ruediger Gebauer, Springer-Verlag.

CrossRef operates behind-the-scenes by enabling member publishers to add
reference links to their online journals. Users of the online journals
see, click on, and follow the links directly to the content; there is no
visible CrossRef interface. Publishers control access to their content.
CrossRef is run from a central facility operated by Publishers
International Linking Association, Inc. (PILA), and utilizes the Digital
Object Identifier (DOI) to ensure permanent links.

Once the service is fully launched, more than three million articles
across thousands of journals will be linked through CrossRef, and more
than half a million more articles will be linked each year thereafter.
Such linking will enhance the efficiency of browsing and reading the
primary scientific and scholarly literature. It will enable readers to
gain access to logically enhance the efficiency of browsing and reading
the primary scientific and scholarly literature. It will enable readers to
gain access to logically related articles with one or two clicks ? an
objective widely accepted among researchers as a natural and necessary
part of scientific and scholarly publishing in the digital age. For more
information about CrossRef, visit http://www.crossref.org.

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