Hello.
We have discovered a problem with publications in OMP that we register DOI for in Crossref: They are made searchable in our library catalog, but are not visible in the library catalogs of other Norwegian university libraries. We all use the catalog system Oria from ExLibris.
It seems like the publications are harvested in databases that are not made accessible by other Norwegian university libraries. Does anyone know where posts from OMP are made available after being registered in Crossref, or where the system OMP itself are harvested? What will our colleagues have to make accessible in their catalogs to give access to our publications?
Regards
John David Didriksen
Senior Librarian
Stavanger University Library
Department of Resources and Publishing
Phone: (047) 51 83 11 15
E-mail: john.d.didriksen@uis.no
www.uis.no/en/library
@AhemNason: would you happen to know this? If not, perhaps contacting Crossref support might be a good approach to find this out?
-Roger
PKP Team
Thanks for your reply! I actually contacted Crossref support. They answered that "Our API and other metadata retrieval tools are fully open and free for anyone to use. We don’t track the identity of any metadata users, so we can’t fully know who retrieves which types of content.
We have relationships with various organizations and institutions who do rely on our metadata, including those who index to enrich library catalogs and databases, and we do occasional surveys to determine who uses it, but not to such a granular degree that I can answer your question, unfortunately."
I have a hope that someone in PKP may know a bit more…
Hi @JohnDavid,
Very interesting - thanks for sharing. I’m not really sure (I’m hoping my colleague could shed some light). Not OMP-specific but where I’m based (in Canada), I think we have some library consortium that might harvest locally created content (e.g. material from OJS/OMP instances (although there are only a handful of OMP instances), and institutional repositories), but I think in many cases unique MARC records are created and shared amongst shared library integrated catalogs. The situation is likely different in many places. It just occurred to me that the Directory of Open Access Books https://www.doabooks.org/en/librarians/metadata-harvesting-and-content-dissemination might also be a place where some institutions are harvesting OMP books from. PKP used to have a central index (the PKP index), but it was retired several years ago and is offline - I don’t recall offhand if it had OMP books, but I think it did.
-Roger
PKP Team
Hi @JohnDavid,
DOIs and indexing are two different processes that are, more or less, unrelated. I suspect in your situation that the books are indexed in your library catalogue in a way unrelated to the presence of a DOI. Though, I also suspect, the metadata for those publications may come from the Crossref API. A DOI is a persistent identifier for the storage and retrieval of publication-related metadata. But, works in Crossref are not automatically indexed by any specific harvesters because they are in Crossref. Instead, a harvester would need to be hitting the Crossref API with specific metadata criteria to pull records.
Typically, these days, harvesting is done via OAI-PMH, which pushes metadata to the harvester deliberately and in a compatible metadata schema. But other than basic web-crawling, all other “harvesting” happening with an OMP installation would likely require a deliberate act by the harvesting body or some hoops that need to be jumped through by the website looking to be harvested.
I’m sorry this isn’t more specific! But, having a DOI doesn’t mean anything is automatically indexed. Crossref is home to over 146 million metadata records. Automatic indexing based on existence of a DOI would be, I think, not great.
I would start by having a conversation with your tech services/cataloguing folks and asking how your works in OMP were added. You could probably contact other institutions to see if they’re ingesting material in their catalogues the same way, and figure out some method of mutual distribution between institutions. This is, perhaps, presumptuous! I suspect that for anything to be automatically “harvested” in this way, these other schools would have to be adding content to their catalogue the same way that your institution is.
Best,
Mike Nason
Open Scholarship & Publishing Librarian, UNB Libraries
Crossref & Metadata Liaison, PKP