Reference LInking Service Announcement

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Contact:
Chris Gardner
+44 171 496 3318

Susan Spilka (Wiley)
sspilka@wiley.com

                               
Reference Linking Service Announces
More Scientific and Scholarly Publishers Join Crossref

London, England. 9 December 1999.  A group of leading scientific and
scholarly publishers today announced a name for their reference-linking
service to link their journal articles -- Crossref -- as well as the names
of four more publishers who have joined this innovative initiative.

The University of Chicago Press, the Institute of Physics Publishing World
Scientific, and Taylor & Francis will be joining this unprecedented
cooperative effort, which also includes Academic Press, a Harcourt Science
and Technology Company (NYSE:H); American Association for the Advancement
of Science (the publisher of Science); American Institute of Physics
(AIP); Association for Computing Machinery (ACM); Blackwell Science;
Elsevier Science (NYSE:ENL) (NYSE:RUK);  IEEE (The Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers, Inc.); Kluwer Academic Publishers (a Wolters
Kluwer Company); Nature Publishing Group; Oxford University Press;
Springer-Verlag; and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (NYSE:JWa)  (NYSE:JWb).

Active discussions are underway with many scientific and scholarly primary
journal publishers to make this a broad-based, industry-wide initiative.  
More are expected to sign on before the service launches during the first
quarter of 2000.  Crossref was initially announced on November 16.

Commenting on Crossref, Robert Shirrell, Journals Manager, The University
of Chicago Press, said, "Reference links are a critical part of the
utility of electronic publications. This linking service, a voluntary
cooperative effort based on an open standard, provides the means for
enhancing electronic publications across all scholarly fields."

Jerry Cowhig, Managing Director, Institute of Physics Publishing, added,
'One of the key objectives of the Institute's Royal Charter is the
dissemination of scientific information to physicists world-wide. This
exciting, collaborative initiative will further that objective and help us
to realize our vision of e-distributed publishing. By working together
publishers should at last achieve seamless linking between online content,
wherever it resides.'

Doreen Liu, Managing Director, World Scientific, said, 'This is the most
exciting initiative from the STM group of publishers I can remember during
my 18 years in the business.  World Scientific was set up with the
objective of serving the scientific community and I believe this
initiative will greatly enhance our ability to do so.'

Researchers will be able to move easily from a reference in a journal
article to the content of a cited journal article, typically located on a
different server and published by a different publisher.  At the outset,
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.  This will enhance the efficiency of
browsing and reading the primary scientific and scholarly literature.  
Such linking 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.

Crossref will be run from a central facility which will be managed by an
elected Board and will operate in cooperation with the International
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Foundation.  It will contain a limited set
of metadata, allowing the journal content and links to remain distributed
at publishers? sites.  Each publisher will set its own access standards,
determining what content is available to the researcher following a link
(such as access to the abstract or to the full text of an article, by
subscription, document delivery, or pay-per-view, etc.). Crossref is being
organized as a not-for-profit entity to safeguard the independence of each
participating publisher to set their own access standards and conditions.

The service, which is based on a prototype developed by Wiley and Academic
Press, was developed in cooperation with the International DOI Foundation
and builds on work by the Association of American Publishers and the
Corporation for National Research Initiatives.  It takes advantage of the
DOI standard and other World Wide Web standards and Internet technology.  
By taking a standards-based approach the international initiative is
confident that the sophisticated demands of the readers of scientific and
scholarly journals for linking of references can be implemented broadly
and rapidly.

PLEASE NOTE:  There will be an update and presentation on Crossref on
Friday, 10 December 1999, from 15:15 to 16:00 at the Copthorne Tara Hotel,
Scarsdale Place, London W8 5SR.  tel +44 171 937 7211 (Underground:  High
Street Kensington).  Senior executives from among those publishers who are
the initial participants will take questions.  The press is invited to
attend this session of the STM Innovations Seminar, which will include a
project demonstration, a status report, and a question and answer period.  
For more information, contact Chris Gardner at +44 171 496 3318.

CROSSREF PARTICIPANTS

ACADEMIC PRESS
(A HARCOURT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COMPANY)
www.academicpress.com
Contact:
Ken Metzner
001 (619) 699-6830
kmetzner@acad.com

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE
(THE PUBLISHER OF SCIENCE)
www.sciencemag.org
Contact:
Nan Broadbent
Director, News and Information
001 (202) 326-6440
nbroadbe@aaas.org

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS (AIP)
www.aip.org
Contact:
Tim Ingoldsby
Director of Business Development
001 (631) 576 2266
TINGOLDSBY@AIP.ORG

ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY
www.acm.org
Contact:
Bernard Rous
ACM Deputy Director of Publications
001 (212) 626--0660
rous@hg.acm.org

BLACKWELL SCIENCE
bslnet.blackwell-science.com/
Contact:
Robert Campbell
Managing Director
+44 (0)1865 206000
robert.campbell@blacksci.co.uk


ELSEVIER SCIENCE
www.elsevier.com
Contact:
Karen Hunter
Senior Vice President, Elsevier Science
001 (212) 633-3787
k.hunter@elsevier.com

IEEE (THE INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS, INC. )
www.ieee.org
Contact:
Anthony Durniak
Staff Executive, Publications
001 (732) 562 3998
a.durniak@ieee.org

INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS PUBLISHING
www.ioppublishing.co.uk
Terry Hulbert
Head of Electronic Marketing
+44 (0) 117 930 1047
terry.hulbert@ioppublishing.co.uk

INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER FOUNDATION
www.doi.org
Contact:
Norman Paskin
Director, International DOI Foundation
+44 (0) 1865 843798
n.paskin@doi.org 

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
(A WOLTERS KLUWER COMPANY)
www.wolters-kluwer.com
Contact:
Alexander Schimmelpenninck
Director Corporate Communications
Wolters Kluwer N.V.
+31 20 60 70 335
aschimmelpenninck@wolterskluwer.com

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
www.oup.co.uk
Contact:
Martin J Richardson
Publishing Director
+44 (0)1865 267780
richarm@oup.co.uk

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
www.nature.com
Contact:
Stefan von Holtzbrinck
Managing Director, Nature Publishing Group
+44 (0) 171 843 4632


SPRINGER-VERLAG
link.springer-ny.com
link.springer.de
Contact:
Howard Ratner
Director, Electronic Publishing & Production
Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
001 (212) 460-1615
hratner@springer-ny.com

TAYLOR & FRANCIS
arakhne.tandf.co.uk/index.htm
Contact:
Stephen Neal
Group Publishing Director
+44 (0) 171 583 9855
stephen.neal@tandf.co.uk


THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
www.journals.uchicago.edu
Contact:
Evan Owens
Electronic Publishing Manager,
Journals Division
001 (773) 753 3375
eowens@journals.uchicago.edu

JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.
www.interscience.wiley.com
www.wiley.com
Contact:
Susan Spilka
Corporate Communications Director
(212) 850-6147
(001) sspilka@wiley.com

WORLD SCIENTIFIC
www.worldscientific.com
Contact:
Chi Wai (Rick) Lee
Deputy Director, Electronic Publishing
+65 466-5775
cwlee@wspc.com.sg