Hello @julieshedd ,
Thanks for your message, and welcome to the Community Forum! Let me start with the greyed-out tabs in the admin tool and then go to constructing DOIs and using our web deposit form to register new DOIs (you do not need to learn XML if you do not want to, our web deposit form will help you build the XML, so you need no knowledge of XML to use it). We also have a targeted method for updating the resolution URLs of your existing DOIs that I’ll conclude this message with. Please do follow up with any questions or comments below.
Greyed-out tabs in the Admin Tool
Those greyed out tabs in the admin tool are for Crossref staff’s internal use only.
We’ve put in a request to our developers that they remove those tabs entirely for members, because having them present but unavailable is confusing for a lot of people. They’ve had to prioritize other development work in the meanwhile, but it’s on our radar to improve.
You can rest assured that there’s nothing there that would be helpful for you!
If you’re interested in knowing more about our admin tool, there’s a recording of a webinar we ran on that topic up here.
And, if there’s anything in particular you’re trying to accomplish in the admin tool, please let me know.
Constructing your DOIs
Crossref doesn’t assign DOIs to your content for you. Instead, we assign you a DOI prefix (a string of numbers beginning “10.” and followed by a slash “/”) and you assign your own DOIs by using that prefix and creating a suffix (any string of numbers, letters, and/or certain allowed punctuation marks following the prefix and “/”). Your DOI suffix can be any alphanumeric string, using the approved characters “a-z”, “A-Z”, “0-9” and “-._;()/”.
To review our suggested best practices for establishing DOI suffix pattern, please see the following document:
https://www.crossref.org/documentation/member-setup/constructing-your-dois/
Registering new journal articles using our web deposit form (can also be used to update existing DOIs)
Broadly speaking, assuming you have recently published a new issue of your journal and you want to register DOIs for all articles in the issue, the steps to take to use the web deposit form are:
- Select the Journal data type
- Enter the Journal and Issue level metadata on the first page of the form. At minimum this includes: Journal title, abbreviated journal title, ISSN(s), and at least one publication year (print or online). If applicable, also enter issue number, volume number, and full publication dates.
[Journal DOI and Issue DOI are optional. If you don’t wish to deposit Journal-level and Issue-level DOIs, simply leave these fields as well as Journal URL and Issue URL empty. Keep in mind that, if you do deposit a Journal DOI, it refers to the journal as a whole, and therefore cannot change in future deposits]
- Select ‘Add Articles’
- On the second page of the form, enter the metadata for your first article (article title, authors, page numbers if available), the article DOI, and article URL
- Click ‘Add Another Article’
- Continue to enter article metadata, DOIs, and URLs until you’ve entered all articles for the given issue.
- Click ‘Finish’
- Enter your username and password and click Login
- Enter your email address and click ‘Deposit’
We also have a web deposit form video tutorial and full instructions for using the web deposit form in our documentation.
Self-service bulk update of resolution URLs
You can update resolution URLs associated with your DOIs by either resubmitting your metadata with the new URLs, or by using the process below for self-service bulk resolution URL updates (using a simple .txt upload).
I can send you a list of DOIs and their current URLs if needed.
Full documentation on updating your resolution URLs is also available here: https://www.crossref.org/documentation/register-maintain-records/maintaining-your-metadata/updating-your-metadata/
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 resolution 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 (this should be the prefix associated with the username you’ll be processing this request with) 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 (not spaces) 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 Bulk URL Update
as the Type, and click Upload.
If you have more than 3,000 URLs to update, you should break them into smaller files. The file upload size limit for this operation is 400 KB.
Warm regards,
Isaac