NFAIS Guiding Principles:  Reference Linking

NFAIS Guiding Principles:  Reference Linking

NFAIS believes that increased access to information will serve the needs of the worldwide community of information users in addition to benefiting its member organizations.  NFAIS therefore encourages the development and implementation of any new technology that contributes to this objective, while recognizing the legal rights of both information providers and users.  

NFAIS believes that technology facilitating the seamless navigation between electronic bibliographic and full-text databases represents a critical step forward in the evolution of information distribution.   Linking technology accomplishes the following:

• Greatly enriches the end-user's experience through the synergistic combination of precision search tools and the gratification of immediate access to relevant full-text,
• Accelerates advancements in scholarly research and in business through a parallel acceleration of the information search and retrieval process and, as a result of these two factors,
• Increases the value and utility of each of the linked resources.

Because of the value that linking technology brings to flow of information between author and user, NFAIS strongly endorses the following Guiding Principles:

• Linking between electronic resources owned or licensed by a single entity should be strongly encouraged and widely permitted.
• Full-text publishers, information aggregators, and abstracting & information services should pro-actively engage in collaborative efforts to link their resources as long as a secure information environment is in place.
• Information purchasers and users should expect and request broad-based linking capabilities from their information and technology providers in order to maximize the return on their investment in those resources.

NFAIS member organizations were founded to effectively and efficiently manage the flow of documented information to all those who need it.  They have consistently initiated and embraced advances in information technology to ensure that their products and services evolve in alignment with the ever-changing needs of their user communities.  Broad-based linking represents just such an advance, and NFAIS strongly recommends that it, too, be embraced and used to the advantage of all members of the Information Community.

NFAIS:  Promoting Collaboration and Communication Within the Information Community

NFAIS members include, among others:

• Access Innovations, Inc.
• American Economic Association
• American Psychological Association
• American Theological Library Association
• BIOSIS
• Chemical Abstracts Services
• CSA (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts)
• Dialog, a Thomson business
• The H. W. Wilson Company
• Information Today, Inc.
• The J. Paul Getty Trust
• Modern Language Association
• National Agricultural Library
• Nerac, Inc.
• Nstein Technologies
• Ovid Technologies, Inc.
• RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
• Thomson ISI

Founded in 1958, NFAIS is a premier membership organization of more than 40 of the world's leading producers of databases, information services, and information technology in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, business, and the arts and humanities.  For more information on NFAIS and its member organizations, contact Jill O'Neill, Director of Communication and Planning (jilloneill@nfais.org or (215)-893-1561).

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