What is the JSTOR XML Gateway?
The JSTOR XML Gateway is a search API available to JSTOR participants to better facilitate metasearching, which is also known as "federated searching" or "cross-database searching". Imagine it as a place where chunks of JSTOR's XML data live to be searched for, grabbed and used.
The Gateway is based on the Search and Retrieve URL (SRU) Service. The SRU Service is a Web Services-based protocol for querying databases and returning search results and incorporates elements of the Z39.50 protocol for Information Retrieval. The SRU service uses the Contextual Query Language (CQL) as the format for submitting search queries. The service allows for both very simple queries as well as complex, powerful queries involving Boolean operators, nesting, etc.
The search results are returned as XML records in Dublin Core format and are listed in order of relevancy ranking. By providing the search results in XML (short for eXtensible Markup Language), the JSTOR XML Gateway transfers article metadata in a standard format to the metasearch engine for display to the user. To learn more about SRU and the related protocol of Search and Retrieve Web Service (SRW), please visit: http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/