DOI management in OJS of articles with different DOI prefix

Software Support
1

Hello, we are running on OJS 3.5 and have acquired a journal that has been publishing for 30+ years with another institution. The transfer has raised a question about DOI management in OJS for the journal’s past vs. future published articles.

We register our DOIs with Crossref, who has just transferred ownership of the DOIs for all back issues from the journal’s former publisher to us. Per Crossref, the DOIs for the back issues must retain the former institution’s prefix. Meanwhile, we as the new owner of the title have the control to update the metadata associated with the existing DOIs, even though we have a different member prefix. Going forward, future published articles/issues will be registered using our institution’s prefix.

With two different member prefixes (one for past vs. one for future issues), we are unsure about the best approach to establishing the DOI settings in OJS. For example, will inputting our institution’s prefix into Distribution > DOIs > Setup > DOI Prefix disrupt or cause any errors for the back issues or their DOIs that are under a different prefix?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

2

Hello @nwojcik

Each DOI prefix is ​​linked to an account and password in Crossref. However, if you have old prefixes and a new one, the new prefix should be configured and assigning DOIs to new articles, and there shouldn’t be any problems for anyone.

The only issue you’ll encounter is that the old DOIs cannot be updated (which is a characteristic of DOIs), and if you need to update them, you’ll have to change the prefix and password in OJS to work with those old DOIs and then switch back to the new one.

3

Hi @nwojcik
Let’s try to make it clear with a few questions. Since our forensic journal had to circulate :slight_smile: among several publishers, I faced a similar situation in the past, but did not need to change doi prefix.
Example DOI: 10.1234546/journalshortname.12345
As you already know, 10.123456 is the DOI prefix whereas journalshortname is the journal title. The rest is just a variable number.
A publisher may use a DOI prefix for unlimited journals by creating different journal titles, such as; 10.1234546/secondjournalshortname.12345
A DOI prefix also means a publisher’s prefix.
That might make the situation a little more complicated.

  1. Was there a PILA DOI agreement between the Journal (or the owner of the journal) and the Crossref, so that the journal has its own DOI prefix? If there is, than no need to use a new one, better to go on with the original prefix. Crossref can transfer that prefix to your account and you may go on assigning new DOIs with the original one. Then the next question comes!
  2. Was the Journal’s whole publishing rights were transferred to the new publisher, so the journal became the property of the publisher, or was it simply a publishing services contract? If It became the property of the new publisher, then It will be better to inform Crossref about that transfer. So the original DOI prefix can also belong to the new publisher and can continue to use it. A publisher can manage multiple prefixes under a single account and single annual membership fee.
  3. If that prefix was shared for several journals by the previous owner, then better to update only the DOI URLs. You can already do that if Crossref has transferred the journal title (not the whole prefix).
  4. If the journal has not previously used OJS as the publishing platform, and wish to use from this moment on, then you will either find a good software programmer to import the journal archive, or trasfer it manually. I used quick submit plugin for another journal, and entered old DOIs manually because of no support.

Even, you may go on with old prefix, and a new journal title. It’s entirely up to you.
Best regards,

4

@nwojcik We’ve done this several times when we absorbed journals that were formerly published elsewhere. Old content keeps whatever DOI it had; new content is given your prefix.

  1. Before you do anything, as @drugurkocak says, the journal or publisher who had the rights to register those DOIs needs to tell Crossref that you are now managing the DOIs for the journal. This can sometimes take a while, especially if the old publisher doesn’t want to exert themselves for a journal that is no longer theirs. Yeah, fun times…
  2. Once you have control over those DOIs, you can import into OJS the back content including the existing DOIs, then send Crossref the new target address for each article. (If you are adding back content manually, you’ll have to type the DOI for each article in the DOI menu, confirm that it’s working, then Mark it Registered.)
  3. As long as you’re careful not to try registering the old content under your prefix, you should be OK.
  4. Once you’ve imported the back content and the DOIs are working, you can turn on the Crossref plugin and set it up to register any new content using your prefix.
  5. As long as you don’t mess with the old DOIs, this works really well. If you accidentally try to register any of the old articles that have DOIs with other prefixes, you should get errors and be prevented from doing so because there’s already a DOI in the record.

Best,

Marianne