Re: Proxied URL's and DOI's in Generated Citations

Hi Melissa,

On our platform, we have taken the stance that "shareable" URLs are a
different beast than citation URLs, and have put in rules that prevent
citation URLs from being rewritten for the same reasons cited.  Luckily, we
have the ability to target rewriting rules at specific platform URLs, so
once we can identify how a vendor presents a citation URL to the user, we
can instruct the software to leave those citation links alone so that the
citation links will be pristine and easily consumable by readers at other
institutions.

Unfortunately, what we put in place would not easily translate back over
the wall to an EZproxy stanza, but I wanted to lend my support to the
position that citations should NOT contain proxy data since research by its
nature should be intended to be consumed by researchers at multiple
organizations.

Andrew

On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 7:36 PM Platkowski, Melissa <
[email protected]> wrote:

> But there is literally a mechanism in place, already set up by EZProxy, to
> differentiate the URL in a citation from a URL in a permalink/stable URL,
> where the proxied URL is useful and not governed by the rules of an outside
> organization.  Citations are a different animal from a permalink.
>
>
>
> I’m just suggesting that if there’s already a method to make this happen
> (and it seems pretty straightforward), it might be nice if our database
> providers and proxy stanza provider was actually using it.
>
>
>
>
>
> Melissa Platkowski
>
> SYSTEMS LIBRARIAN
>
> ..........................................................................
>
> UW-Green Bay Libraries, Cofrin Library CL305G
>
> UW-Green Bay, 2420 Nicolet Drive
>
> Green Bay, WI 54311
>
> www.uwgb.edu/libraries
>
> *tel: *920-465-2764 *email:* [email protected]
>
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>
>
> *From:* EZproxy List <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Stuart
> Yeates
> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 19, 2019 4:05 PM
> *To:* [email protected]
> *Subject:* Re: [EZPROXY-L] Proxied URL's and DOI's in Generated Citations
>
>
>
> This issue is complex, because most times you want a DOI to be proxied,
> because most links are dereferenced by the same user for whom they are
> generated and not put into bibliographies and distributed for anything to
> dereference.
>
>
>
> The current EZproxy model of proxying assumes anyone dereferencing the URL
> is associated with the institution and still has a working login. It would
> be theoretically possible to change that logic, but it would be a great
> deal of work.
>
>
>
> Ngā mihi
>
> stuart
>
> --
>
> Stuart Yeates
>
> Library Technology Specialist
>
> Victoria University of Wellington
>
> [email protected]
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* EZproxy List <[email protected]> on behalf of Platkowski,
> Melissa <[email protected]>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 20 November 2019 10:43 AM
> *To:* [email protected] <[email protected]>
> *Subject:* [EZPROXY-L] Proxied URL's and DOI's in Generated Citations
>
>
>
> I couldn’t find a mention of this on the listserv, and I thought it worth
> bringing up to the community.
>
>
>
> We’ve been getting reports from faculty that they are seeing citations
> come through on student papers that have DOI’s or URL’s in them with the
> proxy information included in the URL/DOI.  This is not correct citation
> format according to any of the citation styles, because the link will only
> work for people from our campus, which is contrary to the point of citing
> sources (making it easy for people to know where you got your info from.)
>
>
>
> While it is also not necessarily correct to include the DOI’s or URL’s at
> all (depending on the style), at least a URL that gives guidance to the
> reader is helpful, and most citation styles are flexible about that.
>
>
>
> In my investigation into this problem, I discovered these citations were
> coming from the automatically generated “cite your sources” features on
> several major database providers’ interfaces, when these providers are
> accessed via the proxy, which we only use for off-campus traffic.  Among
> the providers: EBSCO, Proquest, JStor, Sage.  Data Planet, too, which is
> smaller (obviously).  There are likely to be others I did not uncover,
> since we are a somewhat smaller instutition.  JStor has addressed the issue
> by choosing to use the URL instead of the DOI, and for some reason, that’s
> working ok.  We do not recommend that students use these tools to generate
> citations, because they nearly always contain some kind of formatting,
> punctuation, or style errors, however we don’t exactly have control over
> what students do.  We ask faculty to remind them of this, too, but
> (surprisingly) we also don’t control the faculty.  ;-)  We do provide a
> more reliable tool (NoodleTools) that does handle citation management, but
> not everyone seems to like it or knows we have it despite our best efforts
> to inform them.
>
>
>
> I’ve also learned that this insertion of the proxy information in a DOI or
> URL can be stopped by a directive.  It’s called Option MetaEZProxy
> Rewriting.  The option wraps the stanza of the particular database, and is
> global if there’s no paired “Option NoMetaEZProxy Rewriting” statement at
> the end, so make sure you have that part, too.
>
>
>
> The problem is that this directive needs a hook - a particular tag in the
> HTML of the database provider’s interface.  So… it’s a two-part solution…
> and we might not know if a database provider’s HTML contains that tag where
> it needs to be, in the citation generator’s HTML.
>
>
>
> Due to the need for vendor involvement and the wide-spread nature of this
> problem (it was replicated by other institutions), it seems like an issue
> that needs to be addressed by OCLC, and not for each individual library to
> address, stanza by stanza, provider by provider.  We “could” check each
> provider’s website for the needed tag with developer tools, but that seems
> like a lot of work to be done by individuals – and if it’s not there, then
> what?  That seems beyond the scope of my work, and the boundaries of my
> time.  And I’m not sure how much of a fight this is worth, considering that
> most of those citations are not completely correct anyway.
>
>
>
> I brought this problem to OCLC support, and they did give me enough
> information (after a second message) so that I feel I could confidently use
> the Option in my configuration file, but even at the level of Tier 2
> support, they did not address my firm assertion that this is a problem that
> needs to be handled  by OCLC and the vendors, not by individual librarians
> tilting at windmills.  So I am not sure how interested they are in pursuing
> a solution.
>
>
>
> Perhaps commentary on the list will be the measure of whether we need this
> addressed?
>
>
>
> Melissa Platkowski
>
> SYSTEMS LIBRARIAN
>
> ..........................................................................
>
> UW-Green Bay Libraries, Cofrin Library CL305G
>
> UW-Green Bay, 2420 Nicolet Drive
>
> Green Bay, WI 54311
>
> www.uwgb.edu/libraries
>
> *tel: *920-465-2764 *email:* [email protected]
>
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