"epub@mimas"

CABRef

Project Summary

Participants:

• Mimas, University of Manchester
• CABI Publishing, the publishing division of CAB International

Project Objective

Investigating the next generation of Internet linking by looking at new models for linking to CABI's abstracts database. The project had two strands:

• CABRef: to investigate and implement a system which would allow an end-user to access directly a CABI abstract.
• Production Development: continuation of the work begun in the preceding Linkage project, to assist the CABI Primary Journals Production Department with their SGML processing.

Project Results

• A CABRef prototype was implemented on the CABI (Manchester) machine. It was demonstrated to the CABI Publishing board on 13 March 2001 by CABI staff. CABI intend to further develop CABRef into a production system made available via publishers in the applied life science domain.
• Software produced for, and used by, CABI Production Department, and associated documentation:
  • An updated version of CABI DTD Version 1.2, which is XML-compliant.
  • A stand-alone SGML parser suitable for use by typesetters to enable them to verify produced SGML aganst CABI DTD version 1.2.
  • Software to convert SGML to conform to DTD version 1.2 from previous DTD versions, and to parse for verification.
  • Software to add Medline links to the SGML articles, and to generate full articles in HTML from version 1.2 SGML.
  • Software to generate the data supply required by Ingenta.
  • Software to generate the data supply required by PubMed (National Library of Medicine).
• During the project several demonstrations of 'work in progress' were set up:
  • CABRef 'proof of concept' (22/06/2000), showing the viability of CABRef Look Up and Abstract Display, using a small amount of test data.
  • CABRef Prototype demonstration (23/01/2001): a Unix Solaris version of CABRef which ran on the Mimas machine, including a significant amount of test data. It formed the basis of the CABRef prototype, with little problem in porting the code to CABI's NT machine.
    • Single query look-up
    • Batch look-up
    • Sample references with links to their CABRef abstract display
    • This demonstration included a batch email interface which could be tried by sending a set of CABRef queries, preceded by 'CITATIONS' to zzsupjaa@irwell.mimas.ac.uk with 'CABRef' in the 'subject' of the email.
  • Production Demonstration (01/12/2000). This showed sample CABI journal issues which had been processed by software supplied by Mimas.

CABRef Overview

The CABRef system allows an end user to access directly a single CABI abstract. Typically this will be via a link from a citation in the bibliographic references section of a journal article. The system consists of two parts:

• A 'Look Up' system which allows a publisher to determine the CABRef identifier for a CABI abstract from its citation information.
• An 'Abstract Display' system through which an abstract may be displayed on a web page by appending a CABRef identifier onto the standard CABRef URL.

It is expected that publishers will determine the CABRef identifiers for citations within articles using the 'Look Up' system and then embed CABRef URLs within the web display of the bibliography of these articles. The first version of CABRef allows access to abstracts of journal articles only, but possibly future versions of CABRef could provide access to abstracts of other genres such as conference papers or books.

Dissemination

The research and development work funded by CABI Publishing at Mimas has been disseminated by the publication of the following research papers, and their presentation at international conferences. The first of these describes CABRef in more detail.

• Apps, Ann and MacIntyre, Ross. (2001). CABRef: Cross-Referencing into an Abstracts Database. Proceedings of the ICCC/IFIP Fifth Conference on Electronic Publishing (ELPUB2001 - "2001: an Electronic Publishing Odyssey"), University of Kent at Canterbury, UK, 5-7 July 2001 (IOS Press). Presented by Ann Apps.
  
  
• Apps, Ann and MacIntyre, Ross. (2000). XML: Using an Evolving Standard in Electronic Publishing. Proceedings of the ICCC/IFIP Fourth Conference on Electronic Publishing (Electronic Publishing 2000: Electronic Publishing in the Third Millennium), Kaliningrad, Russia, 17-19 August 2000 (ICCC Press) pp 99-110. Presented by Ross MacIntyre.

6 August 2002

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