What is the Reference Resolution Engine?

The AIP Reference Resolution Engine provides a user friendly method of linking to journal articles in AIP's Scitation platform (OJPS). The resolver engine is a web program that HTML authors can link to which will in turn redirect the user to the desired content item. Access to html abstracts, pdf articles and full-text html are all available. Authors need only supply standard citation information, journal, volume and page, to forge a link. Typically, a web page author puts an "anchor" tag in an html file: <A href="http://x.y.z/fil.htm"> to form a link from one page to another. This document describes how to construct such a link to physics article on-line at AIP's Scitation platform (http://www.scitation.org).
 

For commercial use the link resolver is well-suited to the style in which scienctific/technical materials refer to archival journal articles. Meta data queries and test-for-existence queries are also provided for.

Technical description of the link resolver

Format

Parameters are separated with a forward slash - "/". A forward slash cannot be used as the last character in the link.
The general format for constructing a link through the reference resolver is:

  http://link.aip.org/link/?<journal-code>/<volume>/<page>(/<author>|<sequence>) (/<format>)

  <format> can be added anywhere after "?"

The general format for a meta-data query is:

  http://link.aip.org/link/?meta=("all" | <journal-code>)[/<volume>] [/<issue>]

Behavior

If a link is unique the user will be redirected (invisibly, without user action) to the correct Scitation URL and find the referenced material.
If a link is non-unique the user will be see a menu of the set of possible articles. HTML authors should not form links that are non-unique.

Authors should check all their links and then add the necessary disambiguating information to those which produce menu choices. The best way to do this is to use the sequence number to be found as the last piece of information for each item on the menu of links. Typically, an author will want to add a "/1" or "/2" to the end of the URL but it is also possible to use an author last-name (last-name only).

If a link is not found, an appropriate "not found" message appears. A concise description of how to formulate links also appears.

Examples of all possible program behaviors can be found in this section

Warning: PDF and full-text HTML do not exist for all articles in Scitation, please check your links to be sure the material actually exists.

How do I link to an Abstract?

All you need to know is the abbreviated name for the journal (three letters), the volume and page number. If the journal, volume and page don't make the item unique, you might want to add the first author's last name or the "sequence" number of the item on the page. In most cases the journal/volume/page is unique.

Here is an example reference as it might appear in a journal article bibliography:

• D. P. Adams, S. M. Yalisove, and D. J. Eaglesham, Appl. Phys. Lett. 63, 3571 (1993)

To find this in Scitation you could type the URL into your browser like this:

• http://link.aip.org/link/?apl/63/3571

Here is how you could construct a link to the item in an HTML page

• <A HREF="/link/?apl/63/3571">D. P. Adams, S. M. Yalisove, and D. J. Eaglesham</A>

Here it is as live HTML (you can click on it and use the back button to come back here)

• D. P. Adams, S. M. Yalisove, and D. J. Eaglesham: Appl. Phys. Lett. 63, 3571 (1973)

How do I link to the PDF*?

* If available. PDF and full-text HTML do not exist for all articles in Scitation, please check your links to be sure the material actually exists.

To link to the pdf full-text of an article, just add "/pdf" to the end of the URL as described above. Using this example:

• D. P. Adams, S. M. Yalisove, and D. J. Eaglesham, Appl. Phys. Lett. 63, 3571 (1993)

Here is how you could type in the URL to link to it

• http://link.aip.org/link/?apl/63/3571/pdf

Here is how you could construct a link to it in HTML

• <A HREF="/link/?apl/63/3571/pdf">D. P. Adams, S. M. Yalisove, and D. J. Eaglesham</A>

Here it is as a live link:

• D. P. Adams, S. M. Yalisove, and D. J. Eaglesham: Appl. Phys. Lett. 63, 3571 (1973)

How do I link to the table of contents for an issue?

To link to the HTML TOC of an issue, just use http://journal-code/volume/issue/htmltoc
For the PDF TOC use .../pdftoc instead of htmltoc. For example,

• http://link.aip.org/link/?apl/70/1/htmltoc
or
• http://link.aip.org/link/?apl/70/1/pdftoc

How do I link to the full-text HTML*?

* If available. PDF and full-text HTML do not exist for all articles in Scitation, please check your links to be sure the material actually exists.

To link to the full-text HTML of an article, just add "/html" to the end of the URL described above.

How do I test for existence?

To test for existence of an article, just add "/ext" to the end of the standard url. Possible return results are demonstrated below in the last three examples. Note that the return value is a hyperlink to the abstract of the item if it exists followed by PDF=<size> where size is the size of the PDF in bytes. Note that multiple return values are possible if the identified page has more than one item and no disambiguating sequence number or partial author last name is given.

Can I explore meta data?

Yes. Meta data is data about (but not the content of) what journals, volumes, issues and articles are available on-line at the Scitation web site. At the moment only the journal level information is available to the public. Only business partners of AIP have access to the underlying meta data.
 
To drill into meta-data use the following:

http://link.aip.org/link/?meta=all

That will return a list of all journals with salient information about PDF existence, the journal codes (3 letter abbreviations for use with the "link" utility described herein), journal abbreviation name, full journal name, issn and so on.

http://link.aip.org/link/?meta=3lettercode

That will show you the volumes available for a given journal (identified by the 3 letter code).

http://link.aip.org/link/?meta=3lettercode/volume

In a similar fashion to the above, this yields the list of issues for a given journal and volume.

http://link.aip.org/link/?meta=3lettercode/volume/issue

This yields the list of page-numbers, sequence-on-page-numbers and PDF-size (if available) for a given journal, volume, issue.

The meta data queries described here will someday attempt to return XML compliant documents with descriptive element names in key spots. code and end-code tags will appear wherever a 3 letter code is listed, volume and end-volume will appear wherever a volume is listed. In addition, issue, page and seq tags will appear for issue number, first page and sequence-on-page. Also, pdfsize will appear for items that have pdf available.

A java application that interrogates Scitation for meta-data will appear here in the near future.

What about commercial use?

Commercial use of this linking service is limited to business partners of the American Institute of Physics. Please contact Tim Ingoldsby to discuss contractual arrangements. Note that volume and issue level meta data is only available to business partners of AIP at the moment.

Commercial users of the link facility are required to supply an identifying argument to the link facility. Links should be constructed as described here and an additional variable must be defined in the URL. Aggregators should append all URL's with "&agg=name". If, for instance, Corporation XYZ is supplying links from their material to Scitation, appending "&agg=XYZCorp" is required. Use of the "agg" parameter should be avoided by individuals but will not damage the system.

Is there an icon I can use?

Yes there is. You may freely use this one:  Here is an example:

D.P. Adams, S.M. Yalisove ,and D.J. Eaglesham: Appl.Phys.Lett. 63, 3571 (1973). 

What are the journal abbreviations?

All journal abbreviations are 3 letters. To view the list of available journals click here.