DOIs are intended to be persistent identifiers, meaning that readers should always be able to resolve a DOI to access the object (the journal article/book/chapter/report, etc.) that the DOI refers to.
As an active Crossref member, you can always update the resource resolution URLs for any of your DOIs. Members often do this during website migrations if a switch from one hosting platform to another means that their articles’ landing page URLs change. When materials are transferred from one publisher to another, the new publisher will also usually update the resolution URLs for existing DOIs so those DOIs send readers to their website instead of the old publisher’s website. That’s the beauty of the DOI: URLs may change, but the DOI stays the same.
But what if you aren’t an active member of Crossref? What if your membership has been temporarily suspended or revoked because you have outstanding unpaid fees?
First: a DOI will always point to its last resolution URL regardless of the status of the account responsible for it. If a DOI directs readers to some URL today and no further changes are ever made then that DOI will continue directing readers to that same URL in the year 2100 and beyond. This is great provided that the URL to which the DOI sends readers is maintained. However, this may not always be the case. Domain registrations lapse, platforms change, and life gets in the way.
Some more good news: even if your membership is inactive, you can always contact our Support team to request an update to your DOIs’ resolution URLs. As an inactive member you won’t be able to register new DOIs until you’ve completed your outstanding payments, but you can always update your DOIs’ URLs with the help of our kind Support team. They will provide you with a list of your DOIs and their current resolution URLs; all you need to do is send us back a list of each DOI’s updated URL. Note that these requests need to come from one of the registered contacts on your Crossref membership. (Also of note: if you are an inactive member who owes outstanding fees to Crossref, you can always get in touch with our Membership team to discuss what you will need to pay in order to rejoin.)
But what about further into the future? What if your organization ceases to exist? How can you better future-proof your DOIs?
As a Crossref member, you have an obligation to continue providing access to materials you’ve registered DOIs for. If a journal you publish ceases its run, its backfile articles should remain accessible. Before registering a DOI, you should always ask yourself: is my organization prepared to support this material in the long term?
Beyond working with our Support team to update your resolution URLs as needed, you have a few more options for the future:
✦ If another publisher will be taking responsibility for access to your materials, we can transfer DOI ownership to that publisher. Just get in touch with our Membership team (hello!) to discuss this.
✦ If your content will be moving to an archive, let us know so we can make sure that archive is triggered. If you are using the archive arrangement for the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN), you will need to trigger the archiving process with the PKP PN by emailing Michael Felczak - get in touch with us and we can put you in contact with Michael.
If you are using Portico or CLOCKSS, let us know, and we’ll be able to get in contact with them to ensure that your DOIs resolve to their new archive location, keeping your existing DOIs persistent.
✦ Don’t have a formal relationship with an archive? We recently worked with a member to set up a quick DIY archive solution via Archive.org’s Wayback Machine. This solution works best for open-access materials.
- Reach out to our Support team to request a list of your existing DOIs and their current URLs.
- Follow these instructions from Archive.org to populate a Google Sheet with a) your landing page URLs and b) your fulltext URLs.
- Submit the sheet to Archive.org to crawl/archive. You will need a free Archive.org account to do this.
- Send the list of your DOIs and their newly archived URLs back to us (or upload a bulk update request yourself if your account is still active).
This will cause your DOIs to resolve to the archived versions of their landing pages. For example, instead of https://doi.org/10.64000/xh94q-w7335 sending readers to https://www.crossref.org/blog/crossref-metadata-awards/, it would instead send them to https://web.archive.org/web/20250516141100/https://www.crossref.org/blog/crossref-metadata-awards/. Even if your site goes offline, access to your materials will be maintained as long as Archive.org is around.
Remember: a DOI is not a one-time “purchase” - it is a long-term commitment to ensuring readers and researchers access to published materials to ensure continuity of knowledge across the scholarly ecosystem. Crossref members (you!) help make that happen, and Crossref is here to support you.
Got any questions about archives, broken links, or anything else? Let me know in the comments!