SFX (Context Sensitive Reference Linking)

Linking to fulltext is an evolving technology and unique solutions by individual vendors are simply not going to keep up. SFX is a model for linking a reference citation, in a database like Scholar, to a full text article. SFX linking is NOT dependent on vendors having agreements with publishers or, in the case of CAS, constantly adding new or revised linking information to ChemPort. A vendor simply has to follow OpenURL standards and be SFX aware. This will soon become a definite marketing plus, for little effort on their part.

OpenURL is a developing standard, but is not really a URL at all. OpenURL accomplishes two tasks: 1) It sends metadata about a reference citation to a 'resolver' (which is a piece of software). SFX is one example of resolver software and 2) the 'resolver' transforms the metadata into an actual URL. The SFX server parses the OpenURL and finds its set of related Target Services.  URLs for each Target are built on the fly when a service is selected.  Once the user makes a selection, a Perl program takes the metadata from the original citation and builds a URL that includes the resource's domain and its standard link-to syntax.

SFX allows each library to have complete control over choices presented to a user. For example, in Web of Science at Caltech, SFX buttons will appear on each citation which, when clicked, take you to an SFX Services page. This page gives multiple options, e.g. Full Text (if available at Caltech), Journal's Web site (if only contents/abstracts are available), Caltech Library Holdings for this Journal, and a link to Caltech's ILL service among other options including searching other databases.

SFX depends on each library maintaining a database of electronically accessible journal titles with tables of 'begin dates' for both full text and contents/abstracts. For article references in journals: 1) not held at Caltech or 2) not in Caltech's SFX database or 3) in volumes before electronic access is available, a generic SFX Services page is presented that only offers Caltech's Library holdings and a link to our ILL service.

SFX linking is crucially dependent on each publisher's electronic journal access mechanism, which currently means that with some electronic journals you can go directly to the article or the issue contents page, and with others just to the journal web page.

The beauty of SFX is that it offers an extremely wide variety of linking options. At Caltech, in addition to the options listed above, we also offer: Search for other articles by any of the paper's authors (from a pull down menu) in Web of Science, Search for articles which cite any of the paper's authors (from a pull down menu) or this specific article in Web of Science, Search any of 11 WWW Search Engines using the article's title words, and Link to abstract in PubMed.

 SFX: Overview for Librarians and Information Providers: http://www.sfxit.com

Caltech's SFX FAQ:  http://library.caltech.edu/help/sfx/sfxfaq.htm

Caltech's SFX Executive Summary:  http://library.caltech.edu/help/sfx/sfx_executive_summary.htm