ResolveRef uses human-readable URLs which resemble minimal journal citations to redirect users to the requested full text journal article. It is written using the Google App Engine framework, and there is a version of running at http://resolveref.appspot.com .

Behind the scenes, ResolveRef does a PubMed search, extracts the DOI, and (hopefully) uses this to forward the user to the requested document.

Eg, the URL:

http://resolveref.appspot.com/ref/BMC Bioinformatics/2007/8/487

redirects to the journal article:

EL Willighagen, NM O'Boyle, H Gopalakrishnan, D Jiao, R Guha, C Steinbeck and D J Wild, Userscripts for the Life Sciences BMC Bioinformatics, 2007, 8, 487.

The general form of ResolveRef URLs is:

http://resolveref.appspot.com/ref/_journal_/_year_/_volume_/_page_

or in the case where there is no volume identifier,

http://resolveref.appspot.com/ref/_journal_/_year_/_page_