In order to encourage publishers and other content producers to embed metadata into their PDFs, we have released an experimental tool called “pdfmark”, This open source tool allows you to add XMP metadata to a PDF. What’s really cool, is that if you give the tool a Crossref DOI, it will lookup the metadata in Crossref and then apply said metadata to the PDF. More detail can be found on the pdfmark page on the Crossref Labs site.

Inspired by Google’s recent promotion of QR Codes, I thought it might be fun to experiment with encoding a Crossref DOI and a bit of metadata into one of the critters. I’ve put a short write-up of the experiment on the Crossref Labs site, which includes a demonstration of how you can generate a QR Code for any given Crossref DOI. Put them on postcards and send them to your friends for the holidays. Tattoo them on your pets.

[See this link if you’re short on time: facets search client. Only tested on Firefox at this point. Caveat: At time of writing the Crossref Metadata Search was being very slow but was still functional.

Following on from my recent post about our shiny new nature.com OpenSearch service we just put up a cheatsheet for users. I’m posting about this here as this may also be of interest especially to those exploring how SRU and OpenSearch intersect. The cheatsheet can be downloaded from our nature.com OpenSearch test page and is available in two forms: Cheatsheet (PDF, 65K) Cheatsheet (PNG, 141K) Naurally, all comments welcome.

We’re pleased to announce that a Crossref working group has released a set of best practice recommendations for scholarly publishers producing RSS feeds. Variations in practice amongst publisher feeds can be irritating for end-users, but they can be insurmountable for automated processes. RSS feeds are increasingly being consumed by knowledge discovery and data mining services.

The other day Noel O’Boyle wrote to tell me that he had updated the Ubiquity plug-in that we had developed in order to to make it work with the latest version of Firefox. The problem was, I had *also* updated the Ubiquity plug-in, but I hadn’t really indicated to anybody how they could find updates to the plug-in. /me=embarrassed.

(Click panels in figure to read related posts.) Following up on my earlier posts here about the structured search technologies OpenSearch and SRU, I wanted to reference three recent posts on our web publishing blog Nascent which discuss our new nature.com OpenSearch service: 1. Service Describes the new nature.com OpenSearch service which provides a structured resource discovery facility for content hosted on nature.com. 2.

Crossref Technical Meeting* The Charles Hotel, Cambridge, MA Monday, November 9th, 2009 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm Please register today! We also encourage you to register for our 10th Anniversary Celebration Dinner, which will take place Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 6:30 pm following the Crossref Technical Meeting at the Museum of Science in Boston, MA. Transportation from the Charles Hotel to the Museum of Science will be provided.

OK, so this has nothing to do with any Crossref projects- but there is an interesting new PRC report out by Mark Ware in which he explores how SMEs (small/medium-sized enterprises) make use of scholarly articles and whether the scholarly publishing industry is doing anything to make their lives easier. This is a topic that is close to my heart.

We are looking to hire an R&D Developer in our Oxford offices. We are look for somebody who: Is passionate about creating tools for online scholarly communication. Relishes working with metadata. Has experience delivering web-based applications using agile methodologies. Wants to learn new skills and work with a variety of programming languages. Enjoys working with a small, geographically dispersed team. Groks mixed-content model XML.

Allen Renear and Carole Palmer have just published an article titled “Strategic Reading, Ontologies, and the Future of Scientific Publishing” in the current issue of Science (http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1157784). I’m particularly happy to see this paper published because I actually got to witness the genesis of these ideas in my living room back in 2006.