Hi,
I am new to this community, and I am not sure if I chose this category correctly.
If I have chosen the wrong category, I would appreciate you pointing it out.
I would like to ask the following question regarding the authority to change metadata associated with a DOI.
A publisher of an academic journal that used publish various articles went bankrupt in the spring of 2022 and gone.
I am one of the authors of articles published in a journal by this publisher.
The website that the publisher used to operate has disappeared, along with its internet domain.
Consequently, the website cannot be traced from the DOIs that were associated with it.
For example, one of the specific DOIs of an article on the journal is as follows:
10.5047/meep.2019.00701.0001
When I try to retrieve the metadata associated with this DOI using curl -iL, I eventually get the following:
HTTP/2 302
date: Sat, 02 Aug 2025 14:01:14 GMT
:curl: (6) Could not resolve host: www.terrapub.co.jp
As shown above, “Could not resolve host: www.terrapub.co.jp” is returned because the domain www.terrapub.co.jp has disappeared, as has the publisher itself.
This publisher ceased to exist without legal procedures, and there is no contact with any of its executives or employees.
According to the laws of our country (Japan), all copyrights are considered to have been returned to the authors under the circumstances.
Fortunately, the journal that includes the above article (called “Monographs on Environmental and Earth and Planets”) was intended to publish just a few but long monographs per year.
And, only 11 articles had been published in total since its volume 1.
With the help of the editorial board members, I contacted all of these authors.
As a result, PDF files of all the 11 articles were recovered (whose DOIs are all disconnected from the article resources as above).
The article files are now placed under a repository of a public organization, albeit temporarily.
Here is my question:
As mentioned above, no one is able to contact this publisher now, and will remain so.
But, some of the editorial board members of this journal are still active.
The editorial board and the authors, including me, strongly hope to change the metadata of the original DOI, and link it to new website.
This way, readers would be able to reach our articles through the original DOI.
Currently, as mentioned above, tracing back to the original DOI ends up with a “Not Found” message.
Who should be in charge of (or be authorized for) such metadata modification?
I know that the original publisher should be the one to do it.
But now that they have disappeared, is it correct to understand that the authority has been transferred to the editorial office?
Or, is there a legal procedure that should be followed in proceeding with a series of things?
I would like to know the specific procedures to be followed in such a case.
I understand that such an instance is rare or unique.
But we are still hopeful that the DOI metadata will be rewritten to be correct.
Thank you very much in advance.
Best regards,
Takashi
