Linking: where are we now and where are we going?

Linking in the scholarly environment has built on the basic linking capabilities of the World Wide Web and evolved to make the research process faster and more efficient. There are many components in the current linking environment and they often overlap and frequently inter-operate. Despite the advances, linking is still in its infancy and future evolution will be rapid, especially as the underlying technologies evolve. This paper describes the current scholarly linking environment, its evolution, its components, and what we have to look forward to in the future.