From: Wilhelmina Randtke <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2024 08:41:57 -0400

The front of house librarians and the back of house librarians tend to have different skill sets and knowledge, or skill sets based on what their job role is.  I find it hard to believe that all the librarians were unaware of Crossref.  I find it easy to believe that the librarian liaised to the editor's college at that university has a PhD or masters or other background in that college's field, and less of a publishing background.

I do think it's common for journals run out of universities in the U.S. to not use Crossref.  Even though payments are minimal, the cost of the DOIs is money handling, and often the person overseeing publishing has a budget for like staples and pencils, and a different person oversees licensing vendor databases, and so it's an organizational leap for the publishing side of things setting up an open account to mint DOIs.  Essentially, establishing the relationship would move at the pace of bureaucratic purchasing, so also the librarians could have known what DOIs are and what Crossref is and also not have had an existing account nor a clear path to establishing one.

And if the journal is published through some other entity than the library, then that's a whole other barrier to the library setting up payments on an account to mint DOIs and to commit to maintaining each DOI forever and ever, which is not a realistic commitment if the articles are managed by another entity/publisher.

Best,
-Wilhelmina


Wilhelmina Randtke
Head of Libraries Technologies and Systems
Zach S. Henderson Library
1400 Southern Dr.
Statesboro, GA, 30458
(912) 478-5035


On Thu, Apr 25, 2024 at 1:02 AM LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Amy Schuler <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2024 09:13:20 -0400

This is surprising to me, however, are you sure the librarians are actually "unaware of Crossref", or are they instead unaware of the proper procedure or workflow for submitting metadata directly to Crossref?  There is a difference.  Off the top of my head, I do not know how to submit metadata directly to Crossref, since the (data) repository I use is already tied into DataCite and mints DOIs for us.  

Also I have no doubt the librarians at the NY institution could figure it out in about 10 minutes.


Amy C. Schuler (she/her)
Director, Information Services & Library

Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies | 2801 Sharon Turnpike | Millbrook, NY



On Tue, Apr 23, 2024 at 10:02 PM LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Ari Belenkiy <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2024 23:06:03 -0700

Dear members,

I got into a curious situation. I recently published a paper in a journal, run by one of the universities in NY State, that failed to provide DOI for my paper.

The editors were advised to submit the metadata for the paper to Crossref and contacted the university librarians but the latter could not help, being unaware of Crossref.

Isn't that scandalous for an American university? How common is this situation in the USA?

Ari Belenkiy

Vancouver BC
Canada