Occasionally we get both members and metadata users asking us in tech support about how they can retrieve a list of DOIs that have been registered for a journal, book, conference, etc. There are a couple of ways to do this, depending on what your objective is. Let me explain.
Using the REST API
If you’re wanting to analyze records in bulk, the REST API is your best option. But depending on how the metadata was registered with us and the way in which we return results at the journal, book, and conference level, you may find that you receive fragmented results. They’re not exactly inaccurate or incorrect, but they could very well not meet your expectations.
It is not uncommon for metadata users to come to us and ask why their query for a specific ISSN does not return all the DOIs ever registered for that journal.
For illustration, let’s look at the journal Szczecińskie Roczniki Naukowe (or, SRN). Throughout its history the journal has used a number of different ISSNs: 08602212, 08603294, 08606692, 08606706, and 08607079.
If we retrieve results for each of those individual ISSNs, we’ll see that we get a patchwork of DOIs from those queries:
https://api.crossref.org/journals/08607079/works - returns 25 DOIs
https://api.crossref.org/journals/08602212/works - returns 68 DOIs
https://api.crossref.org/journals/08603294/works - returns 19 DOIs
Now is when we’re usually asked why aren’t all of these records complete. As in, why aren’t all DOIs ever registered for this journal returned in each query by ISSN? The reason is because in the queries above, I’m querying the metadata records by only one ISSN at a time, so we’re only getting results based on that individual ISSN being present in the metadata records of those DOIs (i.e., ISSN 08603294 was only included in the metadata of 19 DOIs registered with us).
There are legitimate use cases when only a subset of ISSNs would be in a metadata record: for instance, some journal articles are only published online, while others only appear in print. In each of those cases, you might only expect to find the electronic or print ISSN in the metadata registered with us for the DOIs in question (i.e., an online-only article only includes the electronic ISSN in its metadata, since the article never appeared in print). Or, perhaps the journal title has changed significantly over time and thus the journal is using a different set of ISSNs under the significantly different title, like in the example above.
All this said, there is a way to put a number of ISSNs into a query and get results for all ISSNs, like this:
https://api.crossref.org/works?filter=issn:08602212,issn:08603294,issn:08606692,issn:08606706,issn:08607079 - returns 151 DOIs
Note: our schema does not require that an ISSN be registered for a journal or journal article, so there may be some cases where a journal and its articles are registered with no ISSN. In these cases the journal will have used a journal-title-level DOI to register the journal and its articles. For journals in those use cases, you’d query by the journal-title-level DOI or use the depositor report, as explained below.
This same type of query using filters can be used for books and ISBNs too:
https://api.crossref.org/works?filter=isbn:9789888455355,isbn:9789888455829
Or, a conference series:
https://api.crossref.org/works?filter=issn:26028646
Using our depositor reports
A few years ago, Shayn wrote about using depositor reports to retrieve citation counts for all DOIs registered for a journal, which is also a handy use case for depositor reports, but simply returning all DOIs registered for a journal, book, or conference can be done as well.
Let’s again look at the same example from the section above: the journal Szczecińskie Roczniki Naukowe (or, SRN). It’s important to note that we’re all about identifiers. In our system, when a journal is registered - whether the individual DOIs registered for that journal include one ISSN, multiple ISSNs, or only a journal-title-level DOI (i.e., no ISSN), we aggregate the records into a journal ID (or, a book ID for books and a series ID for conference and other types of series) so that identifier can be used for all works associated with it.
The depositor report for the journal Szczecińskie Roczniki Naukowe is available here: https://data.crossref.org/depositorreport?pubid=J326877
And, yes, that 326877 is the journal ID for the journal Szczecińskie Roczniki Naukowe and all of its ISSNs and journal articles.
How can you find these cite or journal IDs and/or the depositor reports themselves?
The most straightforward way of doing so is using the parent-level journal depositor report: https://www.crossref.org/06members/51depositor.html (for journals)
https://www.crossref.org/06members/51depositorB.html (for books)
https://www.crossref.org/06members/51depositorCP.html (for conferences)
I know that this journal is published and registered by the Biodiversity Heritage Library so I can search for the journal by organization (i.e., Biodiversity Heritage Library) and then scroll down to find the journal Szczecińskie Roczniki Naukowe.
If you are looking to go directly to the depositor report for any individual journal, you can find that journal ID using either our XML API, if you have a DOI registered for that journal, or our browsable title list, if you are searching by an ISSN or journal title.
Using the XML API to locate the journal ID
Here’s a DOI (10.5962/p.411498) registered in the journal and its results in our XML API: https://doi.crossref.org/search/doi?pid=support@crossref.org&format=unixsd&doi=10.5962/p.411498
Using the browsable title list to locate the journal ID
As we have established, we have several ISSNs that have been used to register articles for this journal over time. Let’s search for the journal in our browsable title list using the 08607079 ISSN.
On the results page, click the id icon to see the journal’s journal ID. Add that journal ID to the base URL for our journal depositor reports: https://data.crossref.org/depositorreport?pubid=J
Note: for books the base depositor report url changes to https://data.crossref.org/depositorreport?pubid=B and for conference series that base url changes to https://data.crossref.org/depositorreport?pubid=S
Here’s an example of each:
The journal Szczecińskie Roczniki Naukowe: https://data.crossref.org/depositorreport?pubid=J326877
The book “Contesting the Myths of Samurai Baseball”: https://data.crossref.org/depositorreport?pubid=B3102153
The conference series “International Conference on Future of Women”: https://data.crossref.org/depositorreport?pubid=S3145632
Thanks for reading,
Isaac