Support for article numbers in CrossRef–OJS integration

Content Registration OJS Users
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Greetings. (Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with PKP, just a happy CrossRef and OJS user. =)

In the CrossRef Documentation, it says:

“If you use Open Journal Systems (OJS) to publish your journal, you should use PKP’s OJS Crossref XML plugin to register your content with us.”

https://0-www-crossref-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/documentation/register-maintain-records/ojs-plugin/

Unfortunately, OJS doesn’t support article numbers yet. I just wanted to raise awareness about the corresponding enhancement request – hopefully someone might be able to assist in its development:

Add metadata for article number · Issue #4695 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub

Background: many journals seem to be deprecating page numbers in favor of article numbers, which CrossRef already fully supports:

“Journal articles and other scholarly works often have an ID such as an article number, eLocator, or e-location ID instead of a page number. In these cases, do not use the <first_page> tag to capture the ID - instead, use the <item_number> tag with the item_number_type attribute value set to article_number.”

https://0-www-crossref-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/documentation/content-registration/administrative-metadata/article-ids/

Given the current lack of support for storing article numbers in OJS and exporting them to CrossRef, journal editors and administrators are faced with the following suboptimal alternatives:

  • lose that piece of metadata
  • misuse the field for first page
  • deposit the metadata manually

Thank you,
-Felipe.

PS: I believe this invitation is appropriate for the OJS Users forum category, just let me know in case it doesn’t comply with the Community Guidelines or anything.

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Thanks for this suggestion @fgnievinski! Unfortunately, OJS is not our system so we’re limited in how much we can help you in its development.

That said, it looks like you’re discussing with the right folks at PKP on this thread: Support for article number · Issue #4695 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub, so I believe you’re in good hands. Anything to add @mnason ?

-Isaac

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5

Yeah, I don’t have much to add. There is a “publisher ID” metadata option, though. It’s under “workflow” and then “metadata”. You can enable it for both publications and galleys. I always took this as being equivalent to an article number. If there are both publisher IDs and article numbers, but the article numbers aren’t in the publisher IDs, so we end up with:

  • publisher IDs
  • DOIs
  • URI/URL
  • submission ID
  • citations

And then an article ID on top of that. That’s many IDs! Anyway, if it’s being discussed in github, that’s the place for flagging a need to the developers. I would say that if it’s a big priority that contributing code and solutions directly is more likely to lead to faster adoption (and even then, it will need to dovetail with our other downstream metadata use cases, I’d think).

  • Mike
2 Likes
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Thank you, Mike! That sounds helpful.

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Thank you for your comments, Mike.

From what I understand, “publisher ID” in OJS serves to store a PMID and the like:

“publisher ID may be used to record the ID from an external database. For example, items exported for deposit to PubMed may include the publisher ID.”
https://github.com/pkp/pkp-lib/blob/main/locale/en_US/submission.po#L708

I just wanted to take the opportunity to clarify my intention as a CrossRef and OJS user in advertising this issue more broadly. I filled in the enhancement suggestion two years ago but I don’t have direct access to developer resources at my organization. So I was hoping that rising awareness about the issue and the solution envisioned in the support ticket would bring us all closer to finding someone able to contribute in such a grassroots effort. The invitation is meant specially for fellow CrossRef and OJS user organizations that have adopted article numbers in their workflows and might have programmers available to assist in the implementation.

Thank you all,
-Felipe.

1 Like