Today’s a day to celebrate; a day I get to make an exciting announcement; the day that finally puts to bed a bottleneck and helps us remove the potential for human error, like we saw in this example from last year.
Yes, I’m talking about handing the keys for making your own bulk resource resolution URL updates over to you!
As you may know, we previously only allowed self-service bulk resource resolution URL updates through full metadata deposits. For those of you registering your DOIs through our helper tools (e.g., the web deposit form), this meant that if you made a typo, you’d need to either resubmit all of the metadata to us or send an email to support@crossref.org to ask us to make the correction for you. Or, for members with a great deal of content, you may have found that a simple .txt file update of your resource resolution URLs after a platform migration or title ownership transfer would have been less resource intensive than a complete resubmission.
Long ago, we created an internal mechanism for us, the technical support team, to update these URLs with your request; and, we’ve been eager to transform this mechanism so you could make these updates yourself.
Here. We. Are.
We quietly released this into the world a few weeks ago and have been testing with real-world examples since. We have recently updated our documentation (https://www.crossref.org/documentation/register-maintain-records/maintaining-your-metadata/updating-your-metadata/) to reflect these changes. I’m also including these instructions below, should you need them.
If you only have a few URLs to update, you can just resubmit your record.
If you have a long list of URLs that need updating (for example, you’ve just finished a platform migration, or you’ve acquired a new title), you can do a bulk resource URL update. Create a tab-separated list (formatted as a text (.txt) file) of DOIs and their new URLs, and apply the following header:
H: email=youremail@email.com;fromPrefix=10.xxxx
where youremail@email.com is your email address and 10.xxxx is the owner prefix for the DOIs you’re updating.
Only DOIs of the same owning prefix may be updated together using this header. For example, if you have DOIs against two owning prefixes, you’ll need to separate your submissions and use the appropriate 10.xxxx prefix for each set of your DOIs.
This is what your tab-separated list should look like:
H: email=youremail@email.com;fromPrefix=10.5555
10.5555/doi1 http://www.yourdomain.com/newurl1
10.5555/doi2 http://www.yourdomain.com/newurl2
10.5555/doi3 http://www.yourdomain.com/newurl3
You can upload the file to the admin tool or use the upload tool. To use the admin tool, login and navigate to Submissions>Upload. Upload your file, choose “DOI change” as the Type, and click Upload.
If you have more than 5,000 URLs to update, you should break them into smaller files. The file upload size limit for this operation is 400 KB.
We can provide a list of your existing DOIs and URLs if needed.
For your next bulk resource resolution URL update, we’d love for you to try this new process. Yourself.
My best,
Isaac