So, let’s say I was with Springer Journals for some period of time. Springer assigned my journal a DOI prefix. And I made a decision to leave Springer and independently manage my journal.
So I move all the articles over to OJS and someone helps me with the import so that all the DOIs from that era can be stored accurately in the database. That’s step one. The prefix and suffixes for those titles need to be in my DB.
Then, I have to initiate what’s called a title transfer with Crossref (or datacite). Because Springer still owns those DOIs. You can’t update a DOI you don’t own. I don’t need to mint whole new DOIs, instead, they can be added to my account as part of the title transfer.
So I email Crossref and get my own Crossref account. They can’t give me the same prefix. Springer uses it for more than one title. But, I can at least get the right to update my existing DOIs that have the old Springer prefix.
So now I’m working on my journal and I have to set the plugin up properly so that my new prefix works with my new publications. OJS can only have one prefix configured to assign to articles. Journals, in general, should only have one prefix that they are depositing to at a time. But because I have ownership of this specific subset of old DOIs with the springer prefix,, I can update the metadata for them so they point to the new location.
There’s no reason for me to be able to edit the old DOI prefixes, because I shouldn’t be.
And, there’s a way to transfer a prefix between Datacite and Crossref
You can contact Crossref about a title transfer between the two services, keep the existing prefix, and then just register all the datacite DOIs with Crossref so you can keep them up to date with just the crossref plugin. Crossref doesn’t charge for these deposits.