Having joined the Crossref team merely a week previously, the mid-year community update on June 14th was a fantastic opportunity to learn about the Research Nexus vision. We explored its building blocks and practical implementation steps within our reach, and within our imagination of the future.
Read on (or watch the recording) for a whistlestop tour of everything â from what on Earth is Research Nexus, through to how itâs taking shape at Crossref, to how you are involved, and finally â to what concerns the community surrounding the vision and how weâre going to address that.
TL;DR A year ago, we announced that we were putting the “R” back in R&D. That was when Rachael Lammey joined the R&D team as the Head of Strategic Initiatives.
And now, with Rachael assuming the role of Product Director, I’m delighted to announce that Dominika Tkaczyk has agreed to take over Rachael’s role as the Head of Strategic Initiatives. Of course, you might already know her.
We will also immediately start recruiting for a new Principal R&D Developer to work with Esha and Dominika on the R&D team.
As a distributed, global, and community-led organisation, sharing information and listening to our members both online and in person has always been integral to what we do.
For many years Crossref has held both in-person and online meetings and events, which involved a fair amount of travel by our staff, board, and community. This changed drastically in March 2020, when we had to stop traveling and stop having in-person meetings and events.
The Crossref Nominating Committee is inviting expressions of interest to join the Board of Directors of Crossref for the term starting in March 2023. The committee will gather responses from those interested and create the slate of candidates that our membership will vote on in an election in September.
Expressions of interest will be due Friday, June 24th, 2022.
About the our board elections The board is elected through the âone member, one voteâ policy wherein every member organization of Crossref has a single vote to elect representatives to the Crossref board.
Crossref allows citation linking using Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) between research produced by different organizations (without the need for individual agreements between them). This ensures that citation links are persistent - that they work over long periods of time. However, there is no purely technical solution to the problem of broken links on the web; Crossref members have to keep these links updated, along with rich metadata that everyone in the scholarly ecosystem relies on.
At Crossref, every metadata record that our members register for their content needs to have a unique DOI attached to it, both as a container for that record and as a locator for others to use. A DOI does not signify any value or accuracy of the thing it locates; the value lies in the record’s metadata which gives context about the object (such as contributors, funding bodies, abstract/summary) and enables connections with other entities (such as people (e.g. ORCID) or organizations (e.g. ROR)).
DOIs include 3 parts:
Of these three parts of the DOI, members (or their service providers) create the last part, the suffix. Because DOIs must be unique and persistent, members need a reasonable way to create and manage their suffixes, which should be opaque.
Here, we share the rules, guidelines and some examples to help you decide how to approach your suffixes. You can also go straight to our suffix generator.
Suffixes are case insensitive, so 10.1006/abc is the same in the system as 10.1006/ABC. Note that using lowercase is better for accessibility.
Guidelines for creating a DOI suffix
In part because there are few rules, it can be helpful to have some guidance in how to approach suffixes. 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.
The most important part of creating your DOIs is to understand that because DOIs are unique, persistent and ‘dumb’, once they are created, they will always work. There is never a need to delete or update existing DOIs.
Best practices for DOI suffixes:
Suffixes are best when they include short strings that are easily displayed and typed but are âdumbâ - meaning, the suffixes contains no readable information, including metadata.
Use a random approach: this ensures the DOIs are opaque or âdumbâ and minimizes attempts at interpretation or prediction (more on opaque suffixes below). Try our suggested DOI registration workflow, including our suffix generator. Any random generator will also work. Note, if youâre using the Crossref XML plugin for OJS,you donât need to create your suffixes as the plugin will generate them for you automatically.
Keep suffixes short. This makes them easier to read and to re-type. Remember, DOIs will appear online and in print.
Best practice DOI example:10.3390/s18020479 This example appears to be opaque because it includes no obvious information.
Avoid the following in DOI suffixes:
The function of suffixes is technical in nature so they are most problematic when they are treated as information to be read, interpreted and/or predicted. Remember, DOIs are persistent and not subject to correction or deletion.
While it may be tempting, using a pattern, such as a sequence, can cause problems. Services and tools that use DOIs may, for example, try to predict future DOIs that are not registered and may never be (more on opaque suffixes below).
Donât include information like journal title (or initials), page number or date. This kind of information should be included in the metadata but can cause problems when included in suffixes for 2 main reasons:
Information in the suffix that conflicts with information in the metadata is confusing.
Information like journal title (or initials) may change or be found to be incorrect, as with dates, but DOIs are persistent, cannot be deleted and are not subject to correction. See more on opaque suffixes below.
Example problematic DOI suffix:10.5555/2014-04-01 This example is not opaque because it includes a date, which should be included in the metadata instead of in the suffix.
Proceed with caution in DOI suffixes:
Determining how to create suffixes and manage the over time can be a challenge. We recognize that some systems have requirements that donât follow this advice and that human readability is helpful in managing DOIs.
If you must use a suffix with meaning, internal system identifiers can work, with careful management. Because things like ISBNs are themselves metadata, we donât recommend using them in suffixes.
Just remember that while you and readers may recognize an ISBN, for example, the DOI system itself doesnât and DOIs are not subject to correction or deletion.
No matter your approach, itâs worth taking some time to understand the emphasis on opaque suffixes.
Once a DOI has been registered with us, it should always be used for the same content. Even if the content moves to a new website or a new owner, the same DOI should continue to be used. Though the DOI never changes, its associated metadata is kept up-to-date by the relevant Crossref member.
What if your content already has a DOI?
Sometimes members may acquire a journal that already has DOIs registered for some articles. It’s important to keep and continue to use the DOIs that have already been registered and not change them - DOIs need to be persistent.
It doesn’t matter if the prefix on the existing DOI is different from the prefix belonging to the acquiring member. As content can move between members, the owner of a DOI is not necessarily the same as the owner of the prefix. Read more about transferring responsibility for DOIs.
The importance of opaque identifiers
What are opaque suffixes & why they are important
Suffixes are âdumb numbers.â They are essentially meaningless on their own and meant to be that way–opaque. One good reason for that is because when something is meaningless, it doesnât need to be corrected.
DOIs should not include information that can be understood, interpreted or predicted, especially information that may change. Page numbers and dates are examples of information that shouldnât be included in suffixes. It is particularly problematic if the suffix includes information that conflicts with the metadata associated with the DOI.
Weâve referred to creating âsuffix patternsâ in the past but information that includes or implies a pattern is also problematic. A sequence of numbers, for example, lends itself to the assumption that future DOIs can be predicted.
Scraping for DOIs - or what appear to be DOIs–is common, as is the likelihood that what is–or appears to be–a pattern will be treated as such. Just as the timing of DOI registration is important, in order to avoid unregistered DOIs, their construction is critical to avoiding interpretation.
More information on creating DOIs
Here are a few other resources that discuss creating DOIs and the importance of using opaque suffixes.