DOI

[shdew]

Dear PKP Support Team:

About six weeks ago, I posted two questions related to DOI, but I received no response, so I will try to rephrase in hope of getting an answer. We acquired DOI through Bowker (http://www.usdoi.org/) before reading the details in the PKP Documentation: http://pkp.sfu.ca/wiki/index.php/DOIPlu ... umentation
The PKP documentation discusses an OJS plugin for DOI (we have no such DOI plugin in our version of OJS), but it also states, “All plug-ins necessary for DOI assignment and registration with mEDRA and DataCite are part of the default OJS installation and do not have to be installed separately.” This statement appears to mean that only mEDRA and DataCite (and evidently CrossRef) work in OJS for DOI and that Bowker DOI is not compatible with OJS. I contacted Bowker, and they said that they did not have an API with OJS and were trying to contact OJS to set that up, however, evidently no one at PKP or OJS followed through with them. Although the OJS Manager’s Set Up, Step One, allows for the set up of DOI prefixes and suffixes (and it specifically mentions CrossRef), I have not been able to get the Bowker DOI to work. My question is, “Does OJS support DOI using Bowker?” If it does, then my second question is "How do I get a plugin to get it to work?"

Stephen Dew

[jmacgreg]

Hi Stephen,

Apologies for not getting back to you earlier. I'm not familiar with any contact our team has had with Bowker, but we would definitely be interested in talking with them. Regarding Bowker, their DOIs, and OJS, however -- from what I see on their website they use the same general prefix/suffix practice that other DOI providers (eg. CrossRef) use, and their DOIS are resolvable via http://dx.doi.org. There shouldn't be any problem whatsoever Bowker DOIs with OJS. If you could provide us with your Bowker DOI prefix + suffix (a general example should suffice), and an accompanying description as to how things aren't working, we could provide a more comprehensive answer.

Cheers,
James

[shdew]

Many Thanks, James, for your quick response.
Regarding an example of the Bowker prefix and suffix, we have a series entitled UNCG Technical Reports, and the Bowker prefix and suffix for it are 10.7253/uncgtr
As I mentioned, our version of OJS has no DOI plugin available, however, as manager when I get into the Set Up, Step 1, there is a DOI prefix box, and in it, I type 10.7253, and for the DOI suffix, I select "Use default pattern." When I publish an issue, however, nothing happens. By the way, I am not an IT person, but am responsible for recruiting faculty to use our OJS and for helping managers/editors with their issues. Many Thanks for any help you can give on this.

Stephen D

[jmacgreg]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the additional details! Regarding seeing/not seeing the plugins: DOI management was moved from Journal Setup Step 1 to a set of plugins in a more recent version of OJS (I think in OJS 2.4.0, although I'm not 100% certain), so if you are using an older version of OJS you'll see the configuration options in Journal Setup Step 1.

The Bowker prefix you have should work just fine. For the suffix to work, though, you will have to choose the third 'Use the "Custom Identifier" option' in Step 1.1; then enable public identifiers to be used in Step 4.3 (probably for the "published items"-level content); and then assign the suffix (eg. "uncgtr") as the public identifier for the item. You can assign article-level public identifiers/suffixes in the issue's Table of Contents page, but only after you enable the option in Step 4.

This should work as long as you are trying to tie "10.7253/uncgtr" to a specific article published in OJS. If you are trying to do something different -- eg. tie it to the issue level -- you'll have to enable a different identifier in Setup Step 4.3.

I'll also note that these DOIs are not prominently displayed in older versions of OJS. OJS 2.4.x display DOIs much more prominently, on article landing pages and elsewhere. That said, older versions *do* provide these DOIs automatically to Google Scholar in the article metadata. But if you'd like them to be displayed publicly, it's probably worth considering an upgrade to 2.4.2.

If you have any further questions, please let us know.

Cheers,
James

[shdew]

Hey James!
Thanks very much for your help and recommendation; however, I am still having a bit of difficulty. I followed your instructions for the Set Up steps 1.1 and 4.3; however, you say that I need to assign the suffix uncgtr as the public identifier for the item. I do not see anywhere to do that in steps 1.1 or 4.3; however, as you note, when I get to the table of contents for future issues, a box for “public id” does appear for each article. A problem arises, however, because I can input uncgtr for the first article, but after that, I cannot add the same suffix to the rest of the articles. Once uncgtr is saved as the public id for any article, OJS will not let me use it again for any other article. Apparently in the table of contents, OJS does not allow me to use any public id more than once. Also, if I publish an issue with just one article using the uncgtr as the public id, no DOI shows up for that article when it is published. I am obviously not doing something correct, so any suggestions on trying something else for this would be greatly appreciated. One other question, you suggest upgrading to OJS 2.4.2. If this would help solve my problem, I will gladly suggest that to our IT folks; however, before I do that, would upgrading cause any problems with the data and journals that we are currently supporting? If upgrading takes a lot of effort on the part of our IT folks, they may not be agreeable to my plea. Again, Thanks for the help you have given, and Thanks for any other suggestions you might have for my problem.

Stephen D

[jmacgreg]

Hi Stephen,

Let me to clarify: while you can (and should!) use the same prefix for all items published in your journal (or as part of your book, etc.), all suffixes must be unique. For example in a journal, the issue itself may have one suffix, while all individual articles would also have unique, other suffixes. Using one of OJS's potential automatic naming conventions, DOIs might look like so:

10.1234/vol1iss1 (Issue DOI)
10.1234/vol1iss1ar1 (article 1)
10.1234/vol1iss1ar2 (article 2)
... etc.

No two individual items can share the same general DOI -- and OJS will enforce this. We're not particularly familiar with Bowker, but I can't see how this would be different -- I imagine you might have one DOI for the issue, eg. 10.7253/uncgtr, and then (if you go this deep) individual DOIs for each article (10.7253/uncgtrAr1, 10.7253/uncgtrAr2 for one possible example).

If you click the "Custom Identifiers will be used to identify issues" option in Journal Setup Step 4.3, you'll be able to use 10.7253/uncgtr as your overall DOI by adding the suffix "uncgtr" as the "public issue identifier" in the Create Issue/Issue Data page. Whether you subsequently create DOIs/suffixes for individual articles is up to you, but I would recommend it as that's the level folks most usually expect to find them.

Regarding display: this is where upgrading to OJS 2.4.2 will benefit you. DOI display in tables of contents were only added recently, so you won't see them embedded within the TOC or article landing pages by default, unless you a) modify the code yourself to add them; or b) upgrade to OJS 2.4.2.

Cheers,
James

[shdew]

Hey James:

I want to thank you again for you help and advice on DOI. I find all of the boxes and input my DOI suffixes as you suggested, but unfortunately, it still doesn't work; however, before I beat my head against the wall on this, we are going to first take another piece of your advice, and we are going to upgrade to 2.4.2. We have had a few other issues with our old version of the software (in Set Up 2.2, the peer review reminder does not work and in addition, we recently discovered that if authors try to submit manuscripts while using WIFI and Internet Explorer at the same time, the submission process does not work on the metadata page). I am hopeful that the upgrade will help with all of these problems, and as you note, with the upgrade, the display of the DOI will be much more visible.

Again, Many Thanks for the Help!

Stephen D

[jmacgreg]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the kind words, and I hope that things start to work better, post-upgrade. Regarding the wifi/Explorer issue: that's a strange one, and I'm not sure that the upgrade itself would help except in that the pages that you are having problems with may load more quickly. I've got access to wifi and Explorer here though, so if you need testing later just let us know.

Cheers,
James