scope:

Purpose and Scope

The purpose of the IOTA (Improving OpenURL Through Analytics) project was to analyze the quality of the metadata that is passed to the link resolver from the OpenURL source and develop a standardized metric for such quality evaluation. The project focused most of its attention on a specific genre of OpenURLs-those intended to provide access to journal articles.

Essentially there are three parts to OpenURL linking: the metadata in the incoming OpenURL, matching metadata in the OpenURL to the library's knowledge base, and constructing accurate links into content provider websites.

The quality of the data in the link resolver knowledge base itself was outside the scope of IOTA. Also outside of the scope was the quality of the linkages between link resolvers and full-text content providers.

A related NISO initiative, Knowledge Base And Related Tools (KBART), is concerned with accurate knowledge base content in the link resolver. Standardizing the link syntax between the link resolver and content provider remains unaddressed by any industry effort. Chandler's 2011 Against the Grain article describes the relationship between these initiatives in more detail.