Overview of the OJS platform

The Open Journal Systems (OJS) is an open-source platform for managing and publishing academic journals. It is developed and maintained by the Public Knowledge Project, a non-profit organization that aims to improve access to knowledge and information. OJS provides a range of tools and features for managing the peer review process, publishing articles, and disseminating research. It is widely used by academic institutions, scholarly societies, and other organizations that publish journals.

As OJS is used as a platform for publishing a scientific article, it is well known in the scientific community to use published content registered with DOI URL, so the author is credited from the citations of the published content and can be easily located the source of the content. Fortunately, OJS support natively in the generation of Digital Object Identifier (DOI). DOI was created by IDF.

The International DOI Foundation (IDF) is a not-for-profit membership organization that was established to provide a global infrastructure for the registration and dissemination of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). The DOI system is a unique alphanumeric string that is used to identify an online resource, such as a journal article or a book chapter. DOIs are typically assigned to digital publications by publishers in order to provide a persistent and reliable way to locate the publication on the internet. The IDF works with publishers, professional and scholarly societies, technical committees, and other organizations to promote the adoption and use of DOIs.

How is OJS used for scientific article publishing?

OJS is used by academic institutions, scholarly societies, and other organizations to publish their own journals. The platform provides a range of tools and features for managing the peer review process, publishing articles, and disseminating research.

To use OJS for publishing a journal, an organization first needs to set up an OJS instance on a server. This involves installing the OJS software, configuring the journal’s settings and policies, and inviting editors, reviewers, and authors to contribute to the journal.

Once the OJS instance is set up, the journal’s editors can use the platform to manage the peer review process, including assigning reviewers, collecting feedback, and making decisions on articles. Authors can use OJS to submit their articles, track the review process, and view the comments and suggestions from reviewers.

When an article is accepted for publication, the editor can use OJS to format the article and create a digital version, such as a PDF file. The article can then be published on the journal’s website, along with metadata such as the article’s title, authors, abstract, and keywords.

OJS also provides tools for managing the journal’s content, such as organizing articles into issues and volumes, creating tables of contents, and generating citation data. It also offers features for disseminating the journal’s content, such as sending out newsletters and alerts to subscribers and integrating with social media and other online platforms.

What is DOI?

A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a unique, permanent, and resolvable identifier for a digital object, such as a research article, dataset, or other types of content. DOIs are managed by the International DOI Foundation (IDF) and are assigned by DOI registration agencies, such as Crossref and DataCite.

A DOI is typically represented as a string of characters that begins with the prefix “doi:” followed by the actual identifier, for example: “doi:10.1145/2669485.2669486”. This identifier is associated with metadata about the digital object, such as its title, authors, publication date, and other information.

The main purpose of a DOI is to provide a stable and reliable way to identify and access digital objects. By using a DOI, anyone who has the identifier can easily locate and access the digital object, even if it’s location or access method changes over time. This makes DOI an important tool for ensuring the long-term accessibility and discoverability of digital content. DOIs are widely used in the academic publishing world to identify and access research articles.

This allows researchers, scholars, and other users to easily find and access digital content, facilitating collaboration and sharing among researchers.

The other purpose is to allow the author to be credited easily for the result of the work that they have done, so it will be tracked easily. One cannot just rely on the domain for an article because the domain can be changed, the publisher of the domain can be taken or transferred to another company, and also the domain can also be expired. Not to mention that the article was retracted from the journal and republished in another domain.

Because of that, the DOI offers more consistent access to the article in the long-term accessibility.

What is The importance of DOI in article publishing?

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are important in article publishing because they provide a persistent and unique identifier for each published article. This ensures that the article can be easily located and accessed by anyone who needs to find it, even if the article’s title or author information changes over time.

DOIs are especially important in the academic publishing world, where research articles are often cited and referenced by other scholars. By providing a stable and reliable way to identify and access articles, DOIs help to ensure the integrity and quality of the scholarly record.

In addition to facilitating the discovery and access of articles, DOIs also support collaboration and sharing among researchers. By using DOIs, researchers can easily share links to specific articles with their colleagues, and DOIs can be included in research databases and other platforms that facilitate the sharing of research findings.

Overall, the use of DOIs in article publishing helps to ensure the long-term accessibility and integrity of the published research, supporting the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of research findings.

The benefit of using DOIs for your article?

here are several benefits of using Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) in an open-source journal publishing system (OJS), including :

1. Ensuring the long-term accessibility and discoverability of published articles: By using DOIs, articles published in OJS can be easily located and accessed by anyone who has the DOI, even if the article’s location or access method changes over time. This helps to ensure that the published research remains accessible and discoverable, supporting the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of research findings.
2. Facilitating collaboration and sharing among researchers: By using DOIs, researchers can easily share links to specific articles with their colleagues, and DOIs can be included in research databases and other platforms that facilitate the sharing of research findings. This helps to support collaboration and sharing among researchers, promoting the dissemination and reuse of research.
3. Improving the quality and integrity of the scholarly record: By using DOIs, journal editors and authors can ensure that the published research is properly identified and cited and that the metadata associated with the articles is accurate and complete. This helps to improve the quality and integrity of the scholarly record and can support the peer review process and the assessment of the impact of research.
4. Enhancing the visibility and impact of the journal: By using DOIs, the journal’s articles can be more easily discovered and accessed by researchers and other users. This can help to increase the visibility and impact of the journal and can support the journal’s mission of promoting the dissemination of research findings.

What is the cost for DOI?

To determine the cost of obtaining a DOI for your content, you can contact a DOI registration agency and discuss your options. Each agency may offer different pricing models and services, so it is important to compare the options and choose the one that best fits your needs and budget. For example, you can refer to the fees charged by Crossref, a well-known DOI registration agency, to get an idea of the cost of a DOI service for publishers. It is important to note that the IDF does not determine the costs charged by DOI registration agencies to end users

Once you have obtained a DOI for your content, users can access and resolve the DOI free of charge. This means that anyone who has the DOI can use it to easily locate and access your content, regardless of where it is hosted or how it is accessed. This makes DOI an important tool for ensuring the long-term accessibility and discoverability of digital content.

For example, if you want to use CrossRef, you should pay two pricing schemas which is:

1. Annual member
2. DOI record registration fee.

The cost of annual membership

The cost of registering DOI for an article CrossRef :

How to get DOI for your article?

You should register or become a member of one of the DOI providers. There is a range of DOI provider that provides services for DOI registration.

Here is a list of some well-known Digital Object Identifier (DOI) registration agencies:

• Crossref: Crossref is a membership-based organization that provides services for the scholarly community, including DOI registration and resolution. It is widely used by academic publishers and other organizations.
• DataCite: DataCite is a non-profit organization that provides DOIs for research data and other research outputs. It is focused on promoting the sharing and reuse of research data.
• mEDRA: mEDRA (Multilingual European DOI Registration Agency) is a consortium of European organizations that provides DOIs for digital content, including scholarly articles and books.
• J-STAGE: J-STAGE is a Japanese DOI registration agency that provides DOIs for articles published in Japanese academic journals.
• ANDS: ANDS (Australian National Data Service) is an Australian organization that provides DOIs for research data and other research outputs.
• CNKI: CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) is a Chinese organization that provides DOIs for articles published in Chinese academic journals.
• This is not an exhaustive list of DOI registration agencies, and there may be other providers that offer DOI services for specific types of content or use cases. It is important to research and compare the services and fees offered by different providers to find the one that best fits your needs.

We recommend registering your institution or company directly to the DOI without using the sub-agency for the reason of efficiency. As we discuss with our client they complained about the additional cost that is charged by the sub-agency.

Here is the link that explains from DOI page that listed the official DOI provider.

How can DOI be used in OJS?

In OJS, it provides a plugin for generating the DOI with ease of the operational process. The DOI in OJS can be assigned to a list of these:

• Article 
• Galley 
• Issue

How to set up DOI in OJS?

Before following this steps by steps tutorial, make sure you have registered to one of the DOI providers to add the configuration for the username and password. In this example, we are using Crossref as a provider to demonstrate using their OJS native plugin DOI registration.

1. Enable the DOI plugin by checking this:
Please go to the menu setting → Website → Plugin → Installed Plugin → DOI

2. Please select the publishing object that will be assigned the DOI

3. Please choose to specify the DOI Suffix you want, here you can take any form, but it must be unique among all publishing objects with the same DOI prefix defined:

4. After you finish and save the DOI configuration, then please click edit again to find 2 menu features as below:

5. After all configuration is done, please save the configuration.

How to assign DOI to article

After you have setup the DOI Plugin, you can add and assign DOIs to each article you have using the following steps:

1. Go to the article submission metadata section, and make sure the article is in the unpublished status

2. If in the previous stage of DOI Plugin setup you chose the “Use default pattern” configuration, then you only need to assign it to the Identifiers menu (as in the image above). Then the DOI number will be generated automatically .

3. After getting the DOI number, click save, and republish your article.

How to set up DOI integration with CrossRef XML Export Plugin?

1. Please go to the menu Setting → Website → Plugin → Installed Plugin → CrossRef XML Export Plugin

2. Click Import/Export Data the CrossRef XML Export plugin by checking this :

3. Then please fill in the deposit name information for each journal in column box 1, and please fill in the crossref account username and password in box 2

Automatic DOI registration

If you want that the DOI to be registered automatically when you publish an article, make sure you left this checkbox checked.

At this stage, if you do the setup and fill in the information correctly, then every published article will automatically get an active DOI, without the need to make a deposit manually.

Manual DOI registration:

This manual process can be done with 2 methods:

1. Manually deposit articles from CrossRef XML Export

a. Go to menu the CrossRef XML Export plugin

b. Then in the Articles tab, please select an article and click deposit. After success, the status of the selected article will change to Active

2. Manual deposit by uploading an xml file to the Crossref site, This method is used as a final option if the automatic configuration fails.

a. Go to menu the CrossRef XML Export plugin

b. Please select the article and click export

c. After the xml export file has been successfully downloaded, please login to your crossref account

d. After that, on the Home tab, please click upload submission

e. Then please upload the file, then select the metadata, and click upload

f. Then wait for the verification process to complete

Tips:

Common Error in DOI:

1. DOI does not locate the correct article URL / DOI not found

When you click the DOI link in the OJS article detail page, the process will be started by connecting you to the doi.org server and the DOI server will redirect you to the registered URL that is assigned to the DOI.

If the registered URL is wrong the doi.org page will show this page:

Solution:

Ask Crossref to change the correct URL target.

2. Element Surname is not valid

This is mean that the author’s name of the author is not added completely for both the Given name  and the Family name.

Solution:

To fix this, you can access the article metadata, unpublish the article and click the author

Both of Given name and Family Name should be added. After you have finished adding both data, you can publish again the article.

Then you should use the manual registration of DOI.

3. Call to undefined function curl_init

It means that the server does not have a curl app that is required to connect to the Crossref server.

Solution:

Install the Curl app, including PHP curl on your server. If you are using Cpanel, you can ask your server provider.

If you can operate the bash command on your server (VPS) you can run this command: 
apt-get install php-curl

Restart your web server and PHP-fpm after finishing installing PHP-curl

4. Crossref error: “The DOI registration server returned an error”

Sometimes the Crossref API that is integrated into OJS returns this error: “The DOI registration server returned an error”, in the complete error it would be something like this :

Registration was not successful! The DOI registration server returned an error: '<html><body><h1>503 Service Unavailable</h1> No server is available to handle this request. </body></html> (503 Service Unavailable)'

If you find this error in DOI you can ignore it and try again at a later moment.

As we experienced, sometimes the Crossref API that receives a response from OJS is off or returning a server error.