# linking the DOI variable

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [February 16, 2012, 5:02pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074 "2012-02-16T17:02:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![andrea\_rossato2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e99b99/32.png) [@andrea\_rossato2](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/andrea_rossato2)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 5:02pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/1 "2012-02-16T17:02:29Z")

</div>

I received this bug report/feature request, about the possibility of  
linking DOI data with a note on how to do it:

[http://code.google.com/p/citeproc-hs/issues/detail?id=28](http://code.google.com/p/citeproc-hs/issues/detail?id=28)

I wonder how citeproc-js and other implementations deal with this  
problem, so to adopt for citeproc-hs a similar approach

Thanks,  
Andrea

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**Author:** ![Sebastian\_Karcher](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/sebastian_karcher/32/176_2.png) [@Sebastian\_Karcher](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Sebastian_Karcher)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 5:05pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/2 "2012-02-16T17:05:58Z")

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citeproc currently doesn’t create any links, not for DOIs, not even for URLs.

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**Author:** ![Sebastian\_Karcher](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/sebastian_karcher/32/176_2.png) [@Sebastian\_Karcher](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Sebastian_Karcher)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 5:06pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/3 "2012-02-16T17:06:15Z")

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sorry, that’s citeproc-js

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**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 5:06pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/4 "2012-02-16T17:06:33Z")

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This is the best approach, and has another benefit:

[http://inkdroid.org/journal/2011/04/25/dois-as-linked-data/](http://inkdroid.org/journal/2011/04/25/dois-as-linked-data/)

Bruce

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 5:10pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/5 "2012-02-16T17:10:45Z")

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Existing implementations generally just treat the output as dumb text.  
I’ve mentioned before that it would be nice to evolve them to allow  
structured data to get extracted from them. So a first step might be  
(optionally?) linking DOIs (which as I hint in the other reply, can  
pull in RDF data). Might also be nice to optionally link URLs, and if  
the aren’t printed, titles.

Embedded RDFa and/or microdata would seems a longer term prospect.

Bruce

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 5:11pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/6 "2012-02-16T17:11:41Z")

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Put differently, they’re optimized for Word docs and print media; not  
the (linked) web.

Bruce

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Charles\_Parnot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/57b2e6/32.png) [@Charles\_Parnot](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Charles_Parnot)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 5:31pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/7 "2012-02-16T17:31:12Z")

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Maybe you could have an extra style attribute value, in addition to italics, bold…, called ‘link’. This way you could make anything into a link. Implementations could decide to output it as an actual link or not.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sebastian\_Karcher](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/sebastian_karcher/32/176_2.png) [@Sebastian\_Karcher](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Sebastian_Karcher)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 7:23pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/8 "2012-02-16T19:23:46Z")

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including options for linking URLs and DOIs would be nice. Ideally  
they would be toggled by the respective CSL implementation.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 3:58am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/9 "2012-02-17T03:58:20Z")

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If we went this way, we’d probably want something like:

\<text link=“true” macro=“doi-url” prefix="doi: "/

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ian\_Mulvany](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a9adbd/32.png) [@Ian\_Mulvany](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Ian_Mulvany)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 11:16pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/10 "2012-02-20T23:16:31Z")

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Bruce, why would you specify the prefix, rather than just denoting  
that the node is a link and then leaving it up to the input  
to provide the full URI?

Would one want to be able to have an implementation that could auto  
render the core identifiers: PMID, ARXIV, ISSN, DOI, in which case  
where would the sanitisation of the input be left to the implementations?

- Ian

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 11:24pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/11 "2012-02-20T23:24:57Z")

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In the example I posted, which is NOT very well thought out, I was  
assuming the full URI would be constructed in the “doi-uri” macro. So  
in this example you’d have “doi:” that is plain text, and the content  
that follows would a link.

The problem I didn’t think through is how to distinguish rendered  
content from link.

Bruce

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**Author:** ![Frank\_Bennett](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/frank_bennett/32/198_2.png) [@Frank\_Bennett](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Frank_Bennett)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 11:48pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/12 "2012-02-20T23:48:04Z")

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> I received this bug report/feature request, about the possibility of  
> linking DOI data with a note on how to do it:
> 
> [http://code.google.com/p/citeproc-hs/issues/detail?id=28](http://code.google.com/p/citeproc-hs/issues/detail?id=28)
> 
> I wonder how citeproc-js and other implementations deal with this  
> problem, so to adopt for citeproc-hs a similar approach
> 
> Thanks,  
> Andrea

Live links to DOI (and URL) are definitely a good thing, and I agree  
that it’s time to get it into place. Should we settle guidelines on  
how it should be controlled? That is, in HTML output …

(a) Should links always be provided? If not, then …

(b) Should processors be given separate output modes (HTML-with-links,  
HTML-without-links). Alternatively …

(c) Should processors be given a toggle to turn links on and off?  
Alternatively …

(d) Should there be a CSL attribute that controls whether links are provided?

It seems like (a) plus (c) would be simplest, and flexible enough to  
cover needs. I think.

Frank

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sebastian\_Karcher](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/sebastian_karcher/32/176_2.png) [@Sebastian\_Karcher](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Sebastian_Karcher)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 12:54am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/13 "2012-02-21T00:54:23Z")

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I’m strongly in favor of c). This is something a user should be able  
to toggle for any given style.  
Also, why limit this to HTML output - any reason that can’t be done in RTF?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 1:00am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/14 "2012-02-21T01:00:39Z")

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Except these aren’t all mutually exclusive. I tend to think C + D is  
probably ideal, in part because I’m not sure how we deal with  
different kinds of base URIs.

Perhaps we ought to collect use cases to figure out whether we really need D?

The one that prompted this discussion is DOIs, where a link URI gets  
constructed out of the id, using a base URI [dx.doi.org](http://dx.doi.org).

Bruce

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rintze\_Zelle](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/rintze_zelle/32/175_2.png) [@Rintze\_Zelle](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Rintze_Zelle)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 1:18am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/15 "2012-02-21T01:18:37Z")

</div>

Particularly for DOIs, it might be desirable to normalize the output. E.g.  
it would be nice if we could render the doi field values “  
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1567-1364.2011.00787.x](http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1567-1364.2011.00787.x)”,  
“doi:10.1111/j.1567-1364.2011.00787.x” and  
"10.1111/j.1567-1364.2011.00787.x" all as  
"doi:10.1111/j.1567-1364.2011.00787.x" (link title) with a href value of “  
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1567-1364.2011.00787.x](http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1567-1364.2011.00787.x)”.

In this case, we might want to make this parsing explicit in CSL. One could  
even imagine creating a new rendering element, cs:link, for that purpose.

Rintze

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dan\_Stillman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dan\_Stillman](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Dan_Stillman)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 2:24am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/16 "2012-02-21T02:24:42Z")

</div>

This doesn’t seem like the processor’s job. All but the last one are bad  
data. If anything, the client should normalize the values before passing  
them through.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rintze\_Zelle](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/rintze_zelle/32/175_2.png) [@Rintze\_Zelle](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Rintze_Zelle)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 3:43am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/17 "2012-02-21T03:43:31Z")

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You’re right. Sorry for the noise. I guess I’m just used to seeing bad  
metadata.

Rintze

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ian\_Mulvany](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a9adbd/32.png) [@Ian\_Mulvany](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Ian_Mulvany)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 11:23pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/18 "2012-02-21T23:23:19Z")

</div>

[http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1567-1364.2011.00787.x](http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1567-1364.2011.00787.x)" is a valid URI,  
however a it seems valid DOI can be represented as  
10.1006/rwei.1999".0001 or as doi:10.1006/rwei.1999".0001  
([http://www.doi.org/handbook\_2000/appendix\_1.html#A1-C](http://www.doi.org/handbook_2000/appendix_1.html#A1-C)) and is often  
represented as doi:10.1006/rwei.1999".0001 or as  
doi:10.1006/rwei.1999".0001.

It seems clear to me that all three prefixes “doi:”,  
“[http://dx.doi.org/](http://dx.doi.org/)”, and “” are going to be submitted in the wild. If  
it’s possible to formulate a solution that can handle all three inputs  
gracefully that would be optimal.

- Ian

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dan\_Stillman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dan\_Stillman](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Dan_Stillman)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 11:45pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/19 "2012-02-21T23:45:09Z")

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> [Laboratory evolution of new lactate transporter genes in a jen1Δ mutant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and their identification as ADY2 alleles by whole-genome resequencing and transcriptome analysis | FEMS Yeast Research | Oxford Academic](http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1567-1364.2011.00787.x)" is a valid URI,  
> however a it seems valid DOI can be represented as  
> 10.1006/rwei.1999".0001 or as doi:10.1006/rwei.1999".0001  
> ([http://www.doi.org/handbook\_2000/appendix\_1.html#A1-C](http://www.doi.org/handbook_2000/appendix_1.html#A1-C)) and is often  
> represented as doi:10.1006/rwei.1999".0001 or as  
> doi:10.1006/rwei.1999".0001.
> 
> It seems clear to me that all three prefixes “doi:”,  
> “[http://dx.doi.org/](http://dx.doi.org/)”, and “” are going to be submitted in the wild. If  
> it’s possible to formulate a solution that can handle all three inputs  
> gracefully that would be optimal.

I don’t know what you’re referring to in that handbook link. DOIs are  
just the “10.” part. The “doi:” prefix and the resolver URL prefix  
aren’t part of the DOI, and there’s no reason for those to be stored in  
DOI fields in clients or passed around.

If Frank wants to add in parsing of those things, that’s up to him, but  
that would make about as much sense as parsing “ISBN: 123456789” or a  
“[bn:[ISBN] - Search Results](http://www.worldcat.org/isbn/%5BISBN%5D)” URL. It’s up to clients to pass  
the processor proper data.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Charles\_Parnot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/57b2e6/32.png) [@Charles\_Parnot](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Charles_Parnot)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 11:51pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/linking-the-doi-variable/1074/20 "2012-02-21T23:51:31Z")

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Agreed. Even though we have a custom processor that’s directly compiled with the app, it is indeed the way things are split on our end: the processor code just takes whatever data is handed to it at face value, with no extra processing. It’s up to my Papers-to-CSL translation layer to return a proper value upon request of a CSL variable.

It makes much more sense to do any parsing at the client level, since the data is also displayed to the user, and might as well be cleaned up for that purpose as well.

charles

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