Retrieving information on organizational authors

Hi :wave:

I am currently doing a bit of desk research about the use of different kinds of contributors in deposited metadata. Specifically, I am trying to find out how the frequently organizations are added as contributors.

The schema highlights they are possible:

I have been trying to find how often they occur in the wild, and some of the DOIs I thought of do not use this type of contributor, regrettably. Now my question is, does anybody have an idea on how to find these?

I am fairly familiar with the API and the docs, but I couldn’t find any information on filtering for this specifically. I thought of downloading the data dump and sorting through that info, but I’m trying to prevent using that amount of energy/bandwidth.

2 Likes

Hi @chartgerink ,

Thanks for your question. There is not an easy way to search by DOIs that include an organizational contributor. This would likely be the closest query: https://api.crossref.org/works?query.contributor=organization, if you were looking for a specific organization name (e.g., WHO = https://api.crossref.org/works?query.contributor=World+Health+Organization). But, that’s not what you asked.

Unfortunately, I think downloading the most-recent public data file and searching it for organizational contributors is your best bet.

This is what an organizational contributor will look like in the XML input:

<organization sequence="additional" contributor_role="author">World Health Organization</organization>

Let me know what you think,
Isaac

1 Like

Thanks @ifarley!

Q: Do you know whether the underlying XML for your WHO query are organization tags instead of regulator contributor? I can’t discern based on the JSON:
image

My expectation would be that it isn’t deposited as an organization because those cannot contain the affiliation tag.

I also checked out the torrent of the data dump and downloaded 1 of the split files (saving bandwidth :smiley: ). I only get the JSON so can’t search on the XML tags, and I have not seen an example of the organization tag so am unsure how to find one!

I am interested in verifying whether anybody uses this tag at all and if so, identifying examples. Until yet, I have not found any examples based on the JSON, so the above question seems relevant.

EDIT: Maybe it is recognizable by the fact it has only name instead of given and `family?

Hi @chartgerink ,

Apologies for the very slow response!

The JSON output in your message:

image

is the result of the organization being registered as an organizational contributor, like this:

DOI 10.26719/2016.22.7.428 - http://doi.crossref.org/search/doi?pid=support@crossref.org&format=unixsd&doi=10.26719%2F2016.22.7.428

<contributors>
<organization sequence="first" contributor_role="author">World Health Organization</organization>
</contributors>

OR, like this:

DOI 10.1007/BF01624625 - http://doi.crossref.org/search/doi?pid=support@crossref.org&format=unixsd&doi=10.1007%2Fbf01624625

<contributors>
<organization contributor_role="author" sequence="first">World Health Organization</organization>
</contributors>

But, if the organization is registered as a person, the XML input will look like this:

DOI 10.15557/PiMR.2020.0025 - http://doi.crossref.org/search/doi?pid=support@crossref.org&format=unixsd&doi=10.15557%2Fpimr.2020.0025

<contributors>
<person_name sequence="first" contributor_role="author">
<surname>World Health Organization</surname>
</person_name>
</contributors>

while the JSON output will look like this:

I hope that’s helpful.

-Isaac

1 Like