Some of you who have submitted content to us during the first two months of 2021 may have experienced content registration delays. We noticed; you did, too.
The time between us receiving XML from members, to the content being registered with us and the DOI resolving to the correct resolution URL, is usually a matter of minutes. Some submissions take longer - for example, book registrations with large reference lists, or very large files from larger publishers can take up to 24 to 48 hours to process.
TL;DR: We have a Community Forum (yay!), you can come and join it here: community.crossref.org.
Community is fundamental to us at Crossref, we wouldn’t be where we are or achieve the great things we do without the involvement of you, our diverse and engaged members and users. Crossref was founded as a collaboration of publishers with the shared goal of making links between research outputs easier, building a foundational infrastructure making research easier to find, cite, link, assess, and re-use.
Event Data uncovers links between Crossref-registered DOIs and diverse places where they are mentioned across the internet. Whereas a citation links one research article to another, events are a way to create links to locations such as news articles, data sets, Wikipedia entries, and social media mentions. We’ve collected events for several years and make them openly available via an API for anyone to access, as well as creating open logs of how we found each event.
2020 wasn’t all bad. In April of last year, we released our first public data file. Though Crossref metadata is always openly available––and our board recently cemented this by voting to adopt the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI)––we’ve decided to release an updated file. This will provide a more efficient way to get such a large volume of records. The file (JSON records, 102.6GB) is now available, with thanks once again to Academic Torrents.
Using the suffix pattern you have chosen, you create DOIs for your content, and register them and their associated metadata during content registration. We don’t provide your DOIs for you.
You don’t need to include any specific or descriptive information in the DOI - that information is included in the metadata submitted when you register your content.
If you do choose to include bibliographic information in a DOI string it will have no meaning within the Crossref or DOI system.
Existing identifiers can also be used for the DOI suffix such as an ISBN, PII (personally identifying information), or existing internal numbering scheme.
This advice applies to DOIs at all levels, whether at journal or book level (a title-level DOI), or volume, issue, article, or chapter level.
From the prefix, you can tell which member originally deposited metadata for a given DOI. However, as content can move between members, the owner of a DOI is not necessarily the same as the owner of the prefix. Learn more about transferring responsibility for DOIs.
Tips for creating a DOI suffix
Be concise: Make the suffix short and easy to read. Remember, DOIs will appear online and in print; users will also re-type DOIs.
Be unique: A suffix must be unique within your prefix.
Be case insensitive: A suffix is case insensitive, so 10.1006/abc is the same as 10.1006/ABC.
Be consistent: The suffix should reflect a consistent, logical system that can be easily recorded and understood by employees of your organization. For example, you might want the suffix to include existing internal identifiers.
Avoid page numbers: choosing a pattern that is linked to page numbers makes it difficult to put content online before pagination is complete for a print version, or if the items are published online only.
Only use approved characters: Your DOI suffix can be any alphanumeric string, using the approved characters “a-z”, “A-Z”, “0-9” and “-._;()/” You might see some older (pre-2008) DOIs which contain other characters.
Make suffixes extensible: DOI suffixes should be extensible, to allow DOIs to be assigned to parts of a content item, such as figures, graphs, and supplementary materials. In an example article with DOI 10.1006/jmbi.1998.2354, the second figure in the article might be assigned this DOI: 10.1006/jmbi.1998.2354.f002
