Metadata Resources Scenario

Landing Page (which is a Content Resource) ➞ Metadata Resources

The use of Typed Links in the HTTP Link header is illustrated for the paper:

Klein, M., Van de Sompel, H., Sanderson, R., Shankar, H., Balakireva, L., Zhou, K., and Tobin, R. Scholarly Context Not Found: One in Five Articles Suffers from Reference Rot. PLoS ONE 9, 12 (Dec. 2014), 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115253.

This is a summary of the links that should be provided:

  • The Landing Page should have links with the describedby relation type pointing at each Metadata Resource that describes the scholarly object. This includes a link to metadata provided by a Persistent Identifier provider (e.g. CrossRef, DataCite), if applicable.
  • Each describedby link should have attributes to express the MIME type and possibly profile of the resource that is the target of the link.
  • Metadata Resources that are provided by the repository that is the custodian of the scholarly object should link back to its Landing Page with the describes relation type.

Link Headers for the Metadata Resources pattern

Visualization of link relations

The HTTP Link Header to link to metadata from the Landing Page URI, which is an HTML publication,
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115253 is:		 
$ curl -I "https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115253"

Link: <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/citation/ris?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0115253> 
 ; rel="describedby" ; type="application/x-research-info-systems",
 <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/citation/bibtex?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0115253> 
  ; rel="describedby" ; type="application/x-bibtex",
 <https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115253> 
  ; rel="describedby" ; type="application/vnd.citationstyles.csl+json"
The HTTP Link header to link back to the landing page for the RIS metadata URI
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/citation/ris?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0115253 is:		 
$ curl -I "https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/citation/ris?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0115253"

Link: <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115253> ; rel="describes" ; type="text/html"
The HTTP Link header to link back to the landing page for the BibTeX metadata URI
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/citation/bibtex?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0115253 is:		 
$ curl -I "https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/citation/bibtex?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0115253"

Link: <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115253> ; rel="describes" ; type="text/html"
Note that the third metadata resource that is made discoverable by means of a describedby link in the HTTP Link header of the PLoS ONE landing page is available at the external persistent identifier provider Crossref. It is unlikely that external persistent identifier provider would provide a describes link back to the landing page of the PLoS ONE article. But the persistent identifier does dereference to that landing page.