Understanding CrossRef export XML

Hello,

We’re just getting started with DOIs and I’ve been working on testing the CrossRef XML Export Plugin in conjunction with the CrossRef backend data management tools. In the process, I’ve noticed things that I’d like to understand better, such as why does what appears to be the issue level DOI for the publications I’m using for testing seem to be appearing numerous times in the XML? Why are there multiple lines associated with one item/DOI combination?

I’m just learning about XML, so my apologies if these are basic questions. Can someone point me to a resource that will help explain these things to me? I’d like to understand what’s going on here in better detail than I’ve been able to find so far in help documentation for CrossRef and the plugin.

Thanks,

Ingrid

Hey there, Ingrid

I can do my best to try to help you out here. I’ll get right to it.

why does what appears to be the issue level DOI for the publications I’m using for testing seem to be appearing numerous times in the XML

CrossRef registers full issue/article metadata for every citation you register a DOI for. When you batch export, it puts the issue-level metadata with every article. This is especially handy since it’s possible to export more than one article at a time via OJS.

Why are there multiple lines associated with one item/DOI combination?

I’m wondering if you can elaborate here, though. My guess is that you might have turned on DOI generation for other objects in OJS like galleys and issues, but I feel like I’d have to see an excerpt to help more fully.

Cheers,
Mike

Hi Mike,

Thank you so much for your help! I took the XML file that resulted from the CrossRef export and plugged it into Excel for better readability. I’m providing a link below to an excerpt from the Excel file that shows for rows of data for one item. In this and other items, I noticed that there’s one row of data for each author/contributor and there’s a separate row for text-mining and “crawler-based” indexing.

And- we only have DOI generation turned on for issues and articles.

Thank you!
Ingrid

Excerpt from Excel file