As a Crossref member, you are required by our membership terms to register DOIs for works that your organization publishes from the point that you join Crossref onward. You are also encouraged and empowered (but not compelled) to register DOIs for older materials such as articles in backfile issues of journals. Registering DOIs for older articles, books, chapters, and other materials is a bit like finding a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle: it helps you and the scholarly community at large track how those existing materials have already been cited in the time since their initial publications. An article published 50 years ago has already had half a century of scholarship building upon, critiquing, or refuting it; registering a DOI for that article helps you better understand those relationships!
Letâs take a look at a few examples of this in practice.
Perhaps you are the new production editor of a scholarly societyâs journal. The society, which just joined Crossref today, has been publishing this journal for 50 years. In addition to registering DOIs for new articles as they are published, you can also submit metadata deposits/DOIs for articles in older issues. Donât worry â you donât need to do this all at once. If youâre working to digitize old issues, for example, you can register DOIs progressively as you make the older articles available online. Note that each object you deposit a DOI for must have its own landing page.
Maybe you represent a commercial publisher and you have just acquired a journal that has published 10 volumes through another publisher. The previous publisher was also a Crossref member and they registered DOIs for volumes 6â10 of the journal. As part of the title transfer process, your organization took on the stewardship of those DOIs first registered by the previous publisher, so you wonât need to register any new DOIs for articles in those five volumes. Instead, youâll be able to update the resolution URLs for those articlesâ DOIs so the DOIs send readers to the corresponding article landing pages on your domain. Youâll also notice that the old publisher didnât register DOIs for volumes 1â5 in the journal. As the journalâs new publisher, you are welcome to register brand new DOIs on your prefix for articles in these first five volumes.
The inverse situation also occurs occasionally, as in this scenario where a journal moves publishers three times. The first publisher may register DOIs for articles in the first few volumes of a journal, and then a new publisher that is not a Crossref member will take over publication duties for that title. As this second publisher isnât a Crossref member, they wonât register any DOIs and the journalâs title record will remain under the stewardship of the first publisher, who are responsible for maintaining those DOIs. The second publisher sells the journal to a third publisher â letâs say itâs your organization. Congrats, youâve inherited a journal with DOIs registered for its first few volumes, but no DOIs for the second set of volumes published by the second publisher. You will need to get permission from the first publisher to transfer the journalâs title record and DOIs to your membershipâs management. Once you have accomplished this, you will be able to 1) update the metadata for the first batch of DOIs originally registered by the first publisher on their DOI prefix, 2) register brand new DOIs on your prefix for the articles in the second set of volumes published by the second publisher who was not a Crossref member, and 3) register DOIs on your prefix for any new articles published by your organization.
In short: if a backfile article or other material now published by your organization does not already have a DOI registered, you are welcome to register one provided that you are committed to supporting access to the material in question. We offer discounted rates for members interested in registering backfile material for certain content types, especially journal articles. If you arenât sure if DOIs have already been registered for your journal/book/etc., you can search here to see who the current holder of a particular title record is. And remember, there is no such thing as an article or book that is âtoo oldâ to register a DOI for it; the oldest DOI in Crossrefâs system, https://doi.org/10.5479/sil.195061.39088003533734, relates to the book Incipit Arithmeticha Boetij, published in the year 1400 (which was at least several years before the invention of DOIs, for those keeping track at home).
If you need to transfer DOI management of a journal/book/proceeding series/etc. to a new member, try our new title transfer request form.