I came across this useful resource: Open standards and software for bibliographies and cataloging (via this post on HubLog).

An interesting item in the resource list is The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services, which also has a detailed proposal.

This is interesting for me to look at right now, as I am just working out some of the finer points on the iCite net protocols for autodiscovery of identifying and contextual metadata for content.

What I am doing with the iCite net isn't the same as OpenURL, but I think, within the iCite net, iCites will have a somewhat more automated (e.g., with things like autodiscovery) means to accomplish what OpenURL attempts to encapsulate in URLs.

In other words, iCites will have pretty and human readable URLs, but like a reverse version of TinyURL, it will be possible to see what all of the query parameters are that are being shortcutted. It is like a View to Table relationship in a RDBMS.