Link resolvers are deep linking web-based technology solutions. They are designed to parse the contents of a uniform resource locator (URL) containing resource metadata – from online journals, abstracting and indexing databases, and other targets – in order to point online users to the content they seek from pre-identified sources. OpenURL is one standardized type of a URL normally comprised of an institutional base URL and a query string containing data such as bibliographic information. 

The “Old Fashioned Way” is Getting Old
An information manager research study that Reprints Desk conducted in May 2009 shows that 78% of corporations surveyed do NOT have a link resolver technology in place. Respondents said that the process of “article linking” is primarily a manual one, conducted by corporate librarians or information resource managers, as well as by the end users themselves.  If the article requested is found to be available in electronic holdings, the article request is “bounced back” to avoid document delivery charges. Then an administrator or the end user manually tracks down the appropriate article-level link in order to access the requested document.

For most information managers, this process means dropping everything to navigate available online resources to find the article-level link – spending valuable time and leading to a less-than-satisfactory end user experience.  With resources and budgets becoming more highly constrained, the challenge remains to find solutions for serving end users without taking administrative time away from other high impact activities. 

Resulting in Unnecessary Costs
Document delivery, the pay-per-view model of consumption for scholarly journal article content, is directly impacted for organizations that lack any method for recognizing subscription journal content. Copyright fees and service charges are incurred for each document delivery request that is created. Multiplied across thousands of users, these costs can soar into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and shift spending away from investments capable of delivering residual benefits. Even for organizations with a link resolver technology, unnecessary document delivery costs are incurred – sometimes because a target just wasn’t at the article-level and other times because end users routinely decide to simplify the content retrieval process and skip online linkouts that often require multiple steps to reach any desired content.

You Be the Judge
Ask your end users about their content retrieval experience or let Reprints Desk help you to do so, and take a minute to try out our Cost Savings Calculator.