[tdwg] Simple reference search & discovery

[Shorthouse, David]

Folks,

 

Rod Page has a slick scientific reference parser at
http://bioguid.info/references and has also made an XML- & JSON- (with
optional callback) generating function with full references as input
parameter. I won't describe the guts of the parser & how it works, but will
instead leave that heavy lifting to Rod. You may read more about it here:
http://tinyurl.com/ynw2q2.

 

I made a simple gadget for web page developers/authors to take advantage of
this superb service. All you have to do is insert one line in the page
header to insert a JavaScript file, download a few small icons and make them
available to the JavaScript (one minor edit in the script), and adjust the
markup associated with your references as follows:

 

<p><span class="article">This is one full reference</span></p>

<p><span class="article">This is another full reference</span></p>

 

.and the functions in the JavaScript insert search icons for each reference.
Upon receiving a visitor's click, a reference is shuttled off to Rod's
parser and, after a very brief moment, the search icon changes to a
clickable icon depending on what was found in the DOI, handle, PDF world.
You can read more, get the script & icons, & try it out on a Blogger post
here: http://tinyurl.com/ytqxo6.

 

What's the point to all this? Well, old reprints are being scanned (&
hopefully being assigned DOIs) all over the place. As a web page author,
it's a pain the neck to stay on top of this game and yet there a strong
desire to make references on a page clickable such that visitors can
immediately download the article(s). There are other solutions to this, but
my goal was to make a tool that is very simple to implement & intuitively
obvious for visitors.

 

Caveats:

1)    Only scientific articles in journals will return successful responses,
but of course nothing in life is guaranteed

2)    There are a ton of ways a full reference to an article can be written.
Successful response from Rod's service depends on the structure of these
references between the <span> elements. Before including this JavaScript and
adjusting the markup on your web pages, you'd best try a few at
http://bioguid.info/references.

3)    Rod tweaks and updates services at http://bioguid.info on a regular
basis so consider all this bleeding edge

 

Have fun!

 

David P. Shorthouse

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Department of Biological Sciences

CW-403, Biological Sciences Centre

University of Alberta

Edmonton, AB   T6G 2E9

mailto:dps1 at ualberta.ca

http://canadianarachnology.webhop.net

http://arachnidforum.webhop.net

http://www.spiderwebwatch.org <http://www.spiderwebwatch.org/> 
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