Hello, I’m Robbykha from Crossref’s membership team.
Happy New Year!
Recently, we’ve had a couple of membership applications from organizations that have published content with DOIs already displayed, on an existing Crossref DOI prefix. However, when we tried clicking on those DOI links they did not resolve. Instead, we got a notification that “DOI not found,” such as https://doi.org/10.13003/unregisteredDOI. This indicates that these DOIs have not been registered with Crossref.
Interestingly, some applicants have not realized that their website is displaying DOIs that have not been registered with Crossref. In some cases, the organization has undergone management changes every couple of years. Previous management may not have explained the existing DOI setup, and new technical staff may not have received proper training on how to register and verify their content. Additionally, some journals may start by using DOI prefixes owned by universities or other organizations, only to later want their own DOI prefix after a policy change. However, they may still display DOIs on the old prefix but fail to register them with us, unaware of the consequences.
Why are unregistered DOIs a problem?
The purpose of a DOI is to provide a persistent identifier for an article - so that DOI will remain the sole identifier for that article forever. You can always update the metadata associated with a DOI, but the DOI string itself can’t change, and you can’t delete the DOI. This is because once you have published the DOI on your article web page or PDF, the DOI is already out in the scholarly ecosystem and may have already been used. It may already have been used by another researcher to cite this work, or downstream systems may already be using it to try and find the metadata associated with that work.
If you display a DOI that isn’t registered with Crossref, it won’t work - it won’t resolve anywhere because you haven’t told us where it needs to resolve. And it also won’t have a metadata record associated with it. This means that if a researcher cites your article using that DOI, they won’t be able to find the right article again. And if a downsteam system tries to find the metadata aassociated with that article, they won’t find anything in the Crossref system
The issue of unregistered DOIs can become especially problematic during title ownership transfers between publishers in the Crossref system. For example, the disposing publisher may have DOIs on their own prefix displayed on their website for their latest issue, but they haven’t yet registered these DOIs with Crossref. As soon as we transfer ownership of the title to the acquiring publisher in the Crossref system, the disposing publisher will no longer be able to register any new DOIs on their own prefix for that title. So in advance of sending us the title transfer request, make sure to get confirmation from the disposing publisher that they have definitely successfully registered all DOIs for this title that have already been displayed on their site and that they all actually work!
It’s also important to note that this issue is often linked to the OJS plugin, which can assign DOIs and make them publicly visible, even if they haven’t been officially registered. The good news is that users can easily download the XML for these DOIs from OJS and upload it to Crossref. However, many users might not even be aware that their site has unregistered DOIs, making this a common cause of the problem.
As soon as your content is registered with Crossref successfully, users will be able to retrieve identifiers and create links with them. The quickest way to test whether your DOI and its associated metadata have been registered successfully (and your DOI is now active) is to copy and paste your DOI link into a browser window, and check that it resolves to a unique landing page correctly.
What happens if you apply for membership and you have unregistered DOIs?
Here are several scenarios when we spotted the unregistered DOIs appears to their publication website and how we handle each of the cases:
A new applicant is displaying DOIs on a prefix belonging to another member
This often happens when a journal has been considering working with one university but decides to become a Crossref member via another university. In this scenario, we would help the applicant work with the member which owns the prefix to get these DOIs registered, making sure that the new applicant is the one who will actually get charged the DOI registration fees. This is a complicated process and will mean it takes considerably longer to join Crossref, so it’s important that publishers do not display DOIs on their website until after they have joined Crossref and definitely have their own prefix to use.
An existing Sponsored member wants to move from one Sponsoring Organization to another Sponsoring Organization
In this scenario, the member organization will continue to use the same DOI prefix. We would, therefore, ask them to register the unregistered DOIs as soon as their account is moved to the new Sponsoring Organization.
An existing Sponsored member want to move to be an Independent member or an existing Independent member wants to move to be Sponsored member
If no new prefixes are involved, we would ask the applicant to register their unregistered DOIs themselves before we make the change.
A new applicant for membership will be taking over ownership of a title from an existing member
If the new applicant is taking over ALL the titles for an existing member, they may be able to take over the prefix belonging to the existing member. In this case, the new applicant would need to get these unregistered DOIs registered as soon as they become members and take on ownership of the existing prefix.
However, if the new applicant is taking over just some of the titles belonging to the existing member, they will not be able to take over the prefix belonging to the existing member, and we will need to give them a new prefix. In this case, the new applicant won’t be able to get the DOIs on the disposing publisher’s prefix registered by themselves. This creates a problem if the new applicant already has unregistered DOIs on their journal website on the prefix belonging to the disposing publisher.
In this case, the applicant would need to work with the other publisher to make sure they get those unregistered DOIs registered on the existing member’s prefix. We will wait until this has been done before we complete the application for the new member.
Need more information?
You can learn more about our title transfer process here.
You can find more information on how to register the unregistered DOIs and the specific steps members can follow to solve this problem here.
If you need more support to resolve the unregistered DOI, please contact our technical support team here in the Community Forum or at support@crossref.org for help in investigating the cause of the error.
Need more help? If you have any questions or encounter any issues related to your application, please reach out to the membership support team at member@crossref.org. We’d be more than happy to assist!