RE: More 'cited by' links in IOP Journals

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

As Terry and Ed and Lucy say, these links will become of increasing value
as more publishers do the same, just as has been the case with the live
links to previously published articles.

This does not remove the need for a general citation index, such as Web of
Science or Scopus. For most journals, it will be a long time before they
complete the back indexing, and some will probably not engage in this at
all, especially those from smaller publishers.�

The great chronological depth of Web of Science, its inclusion of journals
regardless of publisher, and its ability to search across fields,
including social science and humanities references to articles in science
journals, continue to make it essential in any true research library.�

The much greater amount of material from non-English language� journals,
as well as English language titles from European or Asian publishers, in
Scopus, although hampered by the limited time period (1996 to the present)
for which there is comprehensive coverage make it a very useful addition
if a library can afford it.

The ability of Web of Science to search directly for citations to all the
works of a given author (though hampered by unrealistically low search and
sort limits) is a very useful function which will probably never be
provided directly by journal-based links. (Scopus does not presently have
this feature.)  For details, see my review with Louise Deis in the
Charleston Advisor http://www.charlestonco.com/comp.cfm?id=43

That said, the convergence of linking features by journals, subject
databases, and general indexes is a wonderful development, giving great
flexibility to the use of the scientific literature. To the extent that
Open Access databases and repositories become part of the system, the
usefulness will be yet greater.

In five or ten years time, the structure of the literature might be
centered on individual articles, or on journals, or centralized article
databases, or decentralized repositories.� I would not venture to predict
what form or mixture will become dominant, or how the linking might be
arranged.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Terry Hulbert
Sent: Thu 3/17/2005 6:39 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: More 'cited by' links in IOP Journals
 
In September 2003, we announced that papers in our Electronic Journals had
been enhanced by links to citing articles from The American Physical
Society and NASA's Astrophysical Data System. I'm pleased to report that
our 'Articles citing this article' tool has now been developed further. In
keeping with our tradition of innovation, we have become the first
publisher to implement 'cited-by' links using CrossRef's Forward Linking
service.

We have made 'cited-by' links available for papers published in the last
10 years. Over the coming months, we will be working our way through our
entire journal archive, back to 1874. To take a look at forward linking in
action, go to the following paper from New Journal of Physics and select
the 'Articles citing this article link' on the right hand side:

http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1367-2630/1/1/006

New Journal of Physics is our open-access electronic-only title (co-owned
by the Institute of Physics and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft) so
the 'cited-by' links are available to all. For our other journals, this
facility is limited to subscribers.

Said Ed Pentz, CrossRef's Executive Director

'Forward Linking - where publishers retrieve and display links to other
articles that cite their content - is a natural extension of the CrossRef
linking network and will provide a better online reading environment for
researchers and scholars. We currently have over 90 member publishers
preparing to use this new service, and are very pleased to see IOP
Publishing be the first to go live with it.'

As other Publishers follow our lead, you will start to see more and more
'cited-by' links from our papers. Similarly, when reading papers on other
publishers' websites, you will come across 'cited-by' links back to IOP
journals. Comprehensive information trails, forwards and backwards in
time, will become a reality.

We will keep you posted on our progress.

Regards,

Lucy Braithwaite
Senior Product Manager