Re: [jats-list] checking URIs

[Bruce Rosenblum <bruce@xxxxxxxxx>]

Kevin,

With respect to part b), you'll want to check the well-formedness of 
a URI as a starting point. If you're looking at this from a 
preservation perspective, you're probably getting content in that was 
tagged by others, and we've certainly seen cases of bad URIs, which 
are often an artifact of a PDF-to-XML conversion process (e.g. URIs 
with incorrect special characters such as ndashes instead of hyphens).

Once you've checked for well-formedness, you can then check to see if 
they resolve. We've done this and the work is non-trivial, and you'll 
probably see at least 10% link-rot. You'll also see than same URI 
come and go on a sometimes-daily basis, as we see in our automated 
testing, so it's not 100% reliable, but it's a good start. You also 
will see some URIs are redirected, and sometimes even redirected with 
a different result every single time you query because you're being 
tracked by the web site.

Bruce

At 05:30 PM 6/13/2012, Kevin Hawkins wrote:
> I am interested in checking all URIs in JATS files.  Well, not all 
> URIs.  I am happy to ignore a URI that might for some reason be 
> mentioned in the prose of the article, but I'm interested in any 
> actionable URIs, even relative URIs giving the location of, say, a graphic.
>
> Given that scope ...
>
> a) Is it true that all such URIs are found in @xlink:html?  Are 
> there any other attributes whose value is a URI?  Or possibly an 
> element whose content is supposed to be a URI?
>
> b) Do people have suggestions on whether it's better to test that 
> they resolve (a link checker), testing for well-formedness as a URI, 
> or both?  That is, does anyone know of URIs that resolve using some 
> software but which aren't valid according to RFC 3986?  If so, for 
> preservation purposes, I think I would want to catch these.
>
> --Kevin

-------------------------------------------------------------------
This email message and any attachments are confidential. If you are 
not the intended recipient, please immediately reply to the sender or 
call 617-932-1932 and delete the message from your email system. Thank you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce D. Rosenblum
Inera Inc.
19 Flett Road
Belmont, MA 02478
617-932-1932 (office)
bruce@xxxxxxxxx