I've been coding. Let there be rife click-thru™!

Click to add my new button to the Google Toolbar on your browser. (Works in IE only. If you have an older version of the toolbar, or don't have it at all, Google will offer you version 4. If you have Firefox then grit your teeth and switch to IE for five minutes please.) It'll end up looking like this, only with better resolution (I only had Paint handy):

This new white-triangle-blue-circle button adds a new function: it performs an instant lookup for a DOI, those number codes that function as persistent URLs on many scientific papers and articles (and some other data objects). Pasting a DOI into the searchbox as in the picture and clicking the new button should push you straight to the official online version of that research paper.

An example: after install, cut and paste just the DOI from this citation (just the "XX.YYYY/ZZZZZZZZZ" bit) into the search box and try it.

You should be sent straight to the abstract on Nature's website. It works by sending a query through the DOI Proxy hosted by the Digital Object Identifier System (more background at Wikipedia). And if Nature redesigns their site structure - well, their (automatic) arrangement with the DOI folk updates the proxy and you are effortlessly sent where you expect to go. The other big publishers do the same, and many small ones. DOIs are designed to persist past and over site rearrangements.

But wait, there's more

We have non-evil smarttag-like functionality too! Select a DOI anywhere in webpage text in IE and right-click - a DOI lookup option should appear on the context menu. Here's one to try:

doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.0020043

And here's what it should look like:

(If you get a different, shorter context menu then you might be getting interference from other toolbars. The MSN Search toolbar did this to me. Turn it off for the purposes of this demo with View…Toolbars. And ask Microsoft about the third and fourth of these software principles.)

Thanks to Google's Toolbar API, this trickery is jocularly trivial: it's just this XML file down in your C:\Documents and Settings\ tree on a PC (dunno about Macs). I will be setting up buttons and context menus for NCBI-Entrez and the USPTO and others shortly. And I'll be sending the DOI one to the DOI folks to (hopefully) put on their list of tools.

There's an Enterprise edition of the v4 toolbar too, for companies who see value in this but are used to more IT command-and-control.

Firefox and Google Base

None of this works in Firefox because custom buttons aren't yet available in the latest toolbar for that browser (v2) at this time. This could switch me back to IE… (In other words: hurry up, Google!)

And the XML file is here on ortholog because Google doesn't host it. If you look in the directory mentioned above, you'll see the file ends up named with a hashed version of www.ortholog.com. I tried hosting the code on my corner of Google Base--i.e. here--but that doesn't seem to work. Weird, cos it works with modules designed for Google Personalized Homepage such as my Google Scholar searchbox module. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong. Must ask them.