article metadata

Myth-busting: article content will appear in DOAJ once a journal is accepted for indexing

This is a myth.

Unlike some other indexing services, if a journal is accepted into DOAJ, we won’t automatically go and collect published content. Publishers have to send the content to us, either via our API or as XML.

Getting a journal accepted into DOAJ is a great feeling and it ensures that the metadata about your journal, its practices and publishing qualities will be integrated into many other discovery services. However, there is one extra step which should be done to really improve your journal’s impact: article metadata should be uploaded to us.

DOAJ has never gone out and collected metadata from journal websites and we have always relied on publishers providing it to us. The reason for this is simple: we simply don’t have the resources to build the many integrations that would be needed to pull published content from the thousands of journals in DOAJ.

JSON or XML, manual or automated?

There are several ways in which metadata can be provided to us, some of them more automated than others:

  1. Our API allows publishers to connect to DOAJ and send us JSON. This is highly automated.
  2. Publishers on the OJS platform–of which there are many with journals in DOAJ–are able to use a DOAJ XML plugin that the good people at PKP have created. This is semi-automated.
  3. There is an option to upload XML to us via your DOAJ account. You don’t need to upload one article at a time. You can upload as many as you like in one file, as long as the file is less than 250Mb. And you can send us DOAJ XML or Crossref XML.
  4. You can use our article metadata input form and input the article metadata by hand.

If your journal is part of a larger publishing platform which provides discovery services to you, ask them what options they can offer for getting your article metadata into DOAJ.

Any questions, or if you need help with sending us your metadata, leave a comment here.

Third update on changes to our API coming in Q3 2020

Progress report on the changes coming to the API in Q3 2020
This is the THIRD update about changes to the API which will go live in September 2020. The first and second updates are also available.

  1. We will be releasing a version 2 of the whole API. All the URLs that you currently use for the API are of the form “/api/v1/{endpoint}”, these will all become “/api/v2/{endpoint}”
  2. The API routes for “/api/v1/articles” and “/api/v1/articles/{article_id}” will continue to work, but they will respond with a permanent redirect to “/api/v2/articles” and “/api/v2/articles/{article_id}”. You should not have to change your article upload integration at all during this API upgrade, though you should strongly consider moving from the v1 to v2 URL routes.
  3. The data model for Journals and Applications is changing, quite significantly. This will affect all Application CRUD interfaces, Journal retrieve and Journal/Application search APIs.
  4. Attached are two files, OutgoingAPIJournal.md.txt and IncomingAPIApplication.md.txt, which show the data models of the Application and Journal models as they will appear in the new API. Full documentation is not quite done yet, but these provide a preview of the new models.

Any questions, please ask them here or email me: dom@doaj.org

Progress report on the changes coming to the API in Q3 2020

Here is the second update about changes that we are making to our API. If you submit applications via the API or are using the API for journals search and retrieval, then you will need to adjust your integrations.

Although development is still progressing, we want to get as much information out to our API users as we can. Here are some key points:

  1. The only thing that is changing is the data model because we are changing some of the questions that we ask in our application form.
  2. Only the Journal Search and Retrieval and Applications models are changing. CRUD Articles and article search are not changing.
  3. We will have a new URL for the API. The applications and journals API calls must be sent to the new URL.
  4. We will establish a redirection for Articles calls.

We have been exploring ways to allow users to test their integrations before the new API goes live. These might include a sandbox and a whole test site for you to upload to. We will have more details on the exact testing features we can offer as we draw nearer to launch.

Any questions?

We can now fix article metadata ourselves

As part of our continued strategy to enhance our metadata offering, and looking forward to 2021 when our strategic focus will be on DOAJ’s place in the discovery chain, we are constantly looking for ways to improve the quality and recency of the DOAJ article metadata.

Errors in article metadata are usually reported to us by users of discovery services at libraries or by the discovery services themselves. The errors are often a broken URL or a missing article.

Since 2013, DOAJ’s stance on correcting metadata has been to contact the journal’s publishers and ask them to send an update to us. However, this approach is of limited success:

  • some publishers don’t respond,
  • some don’t know how to make the correction and,
  • since we do matching on the URL, the process often leads to duplicated articles.

As of yesterday, DOAJ can edit article metadata itself, including the URL, directly in the database. This makes changes immediate and goes a long way to improve the reliability of the DOAJ metadata. Importantly, it allows us to act quickly on queries sent to us by our discovery service colleagues.

The crux of the matter, when it comes to the accuracy of DOAJ metadata, remains unchanged however: all 3rd party services should update their copy of the DOAJ metadata regularly. DOAJ metadata updates every 30 minutes. Some 3rd party services only update their copy of our metadata every 6 months.

Heads up! Our API is changing.

The DOAJ is changing its application form. This means that there will be downstream implications across all of our metadata output channels, including the API.

A new version of the API will be released in Q3 2020. This new version will not be fully backwards compatible.

Those of you submitting applications via the API, or who are using the API for journals search and retrieval, will need to adjust your integrations.

Not all functions will be affected: for those of you who are uploading article metadata to us, nothing will change; there is nothing for you to do.

If you have any questions, please post them here.

Further announcements will happen here and on our Twitter feed.

DOAJ será compatible con Crossref

metadata-from-crossref-logo-200En una serie de mejoras de metadatos, DOAJ aceptará la carga de XML en formato Crossref a partir del 18 de febrero de 2020.

 

En 2018, preguntamos a nuestros editores qué facilitaría su interacción con DOAJ y el 46% dijo que les gustaría que aceptásemos Crossref XML. Hoy en día sólo aceptamos XML en nuestro formato DOAJ.

Hay algunas aclaraciones que nos gustaría hacer en torno a esta mejora:

  1. No vamos a desconectar DOAJ XML. Si ya nos están suministrando DOAJ XML, pueden continuar haciéndolo. No hay cambios en este sentido.
  2. Si quieren cambiar a Crossref XML, pueden hacerlo cuando quieran. Sin embargo:
  3. No se pueden mezclar XML de Crossref y DOAJ en el mismo archivo.
  4. El  ISSN no siempre está presente en los XML de Crossref. Cuando se envía un archivo XML de Crossref a DOAJ, se deben incluir los ISSN(s) para que la carga sea exitosa.
  5. El proceso de subida de metadatos de artículos en DOAJ no cambia: por ahora, todavía tendrán que seguir enviándolos. DOAJ no cosecha los artículos automáticamente.
  6. Los XMLs de Crossref se suben desde la misma página en la que se cargan los XML con formato DOAJ. https://doaj.org/publisher/  Ahora deben elegir qué formato quieren enviarnos:
    format
  7. Las revistas editadas en plataforma OJS que usan el plugin de DOAJ para generar XML, deberían continuar haciéndolo. No hay cambios en este sentido.

Si su revista tiene contenido en el formato Crossref que les interese enviar, sólo tienen que subirnos el archivo de manera normal. Crossref facilita varias formas de recuperarsus metadatos de ellos si aún no disponen de ellos.

Se harán más anuncios en los próximos días.

DOAJ to add Crossref compatibility

metadata-from-crossref-logo-200In a series of metadata improvements, publishers will be able to upload XML in the Crossref format to us from 18th February 2020.

In 2018, we asked our publishers what would make their interaction with DOAJ easier and 46% said that they would like us to accept Crossref XML. Today we only accept XML formatted to our proprietary DOAJ format.

There are a few clarifications that we’d like to make around this improvement:

  1. We are not switching off DOAJ XML. If you are already supplying DOAJ XML to us, you may continue to do so. Nothing changes for you.
  2. If you want to switch to Crossref XML, you may do so whenever you like. However,…
  3. You cannot mix Crossref and DOAJ XML in the same file.
  4. An ISSN is usually but not always present in Crossref XML. When sending Crossref XML to DOAJ, an ISSN must be included for the upload to be successful.
  5. The process of getting article metadata into DOAJ doesn’t change: you will still need to continue to send it to us, for now.
  6. Crossref XML is uploaded from the same page that DOAJ XML is uploaded to us: https://doaj.org/publisher/ but you must now choose which format you want to send to us:
    format
  7. Publishers on the OJS platform, using the DOAJ plugin to generate XML, should continue to do so. No change is needed.

If you have back data in the Crossref format that you want to send to us, just upload the file to us in the normal way. Crossref facilitate various ways for you to retrieve your metadata from them if you don’t have it already.

Further announcements will be made next week.

 

Two updates: ORCID integration; updated ISO code lists for country, language and currency

On Monday 3rd February we will release two updates to the site.

ORCID integration

ORCID 'ID' logoFrom Monday, it will be possible to upload to DOAJ article metadata containing ORCID iDs.

We will then display ORCID iDs on article pages in accordance with the ORCID display guidelines. Changes will be made to the search interface and API to allow search and retrieval of ORCID iDs.

Details on how to tag ORCID iDs in DOAJ XML will be available on our XML page. For those of you who provide metadata to us via the manual input form, a new ORCID field will be available there.

ORCID iDs will be available downstream in our metadata.

We are delighted to release this addition to the DOAJ platform. DOAJ recognises the importance of permanent identifiers (PIDs) such as ORCID iDs and encourages their use in article metadata.

Updated ISO code lists for country, language and currency

We will also be releasing an update to the code lists for countries, currencies and languages. These haven’t been updated since 2013 so there are quite a few changes, most of them standardisation of a name or spelling plus some obvious geopolitical changes too.

We have used a service called Pycountry which takes in the standard ISO lists for these 3 lists.

You can see the full list of changes here.

For those publishers supplying metadata to us who wish to update a language code in metadata that has already been sent to us, please contact us via the Feedback account.

The Top 10 most accessed articles in DOAJ so far this year

Digging into the metrics in DOAJ’s Google Analytics can be fun and enlightening. (And a total sink hole of my time.)

Here are the Top 10 most accessed articles in DOAJ so far this year. An interesting and somewhat curious collection largely driven, I suspect, by academic reading lists in schools, colleges and universities.

The article in Number 1 position is also the most accessed article for the whole of 2018. Accesses came from Indonesia, China, India, USA, Nigeria, Argentina, Canada, Iran, Mexico and Norway

What do you think of these stats?

Article details Unique Page Views
Study progresses on continuous curvilinear capsulorhexis
Guoji Yanke Zazhi. 2015;15(10):1737-1740
DOI 10.3980/j.issn.1672-5123.2015.10.16		 3,734
The Importance of Reflective Practice in Nursing
International Journal of Caring Sciences. 2013;6(3):319-326		 3,455
Creswell J.W.: Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches, London: Sage publications, 2009
Politeia. 2016;6(12):191-194		 3,245
García Avilés, José Alberto. Comunicar en la sociedad de la red. Teorías, modelos y prácticas.
Cuadernos de Información y Comunicación. 2017;22(0):325-327 DOI 10.5209/CIYC.55987		 2,849
Using the Sixth Edition of the APA Manual: A Guide for Students
Georgia Educational Researcher. 2009;7(2)
DOI 10.20429/ger.2009.070201		 1,969
Active Learning: The Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky, and Constructivist Theory Perspectives
Jurnal Ilmu Pendidikan. 2016;9(3) DOI 10.17977/jip.v9i3.487		 1,948
Methods and Teaching Strategies Used by Teacher Education Faculty Members in one State University in the Philippines
Asia Pacific Journal of Multidisciplinary Research. 2015;3(5.3):36-44		 1,796
The Use Of Ansoff Matrix In The Field Of Business
Analele Universităţii Constantin Brâncuşi din Târgu Jiu : Seria Economie. 2017;2(special issue):141-149		 1,661
Project Scope Management Process
Baltic Journal of Economic Studies. 2018;4(1):118-125 DOI 10.30525/2256-0742/2018-4-1-118-125		 1,592
The Helpless Angel in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper
International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies. 2018;06(03):130-136		 1,579

Article uploads: the importance of an ISSN

This is a reminder that in February this year we tightened up procedures for article uploads. This includes checks that are carried out on uploads particularly ISSN, DOI, and full text URL information.

This means that, whether uploading article XML to us or JSON via the API, the metadata must include the exact same ISSN value(s) as those we hold in the journal record in DOAJ. If you have two ISSNs on the website and we only have one, you should contact us to have the second ISSN added. Usually, this is a quick process but sometimes you might need to contact ISSN.org to have them update their information before we can continue.

If you have any questions on this, do contact us.