CrossRef integration into an existing software

Content Registration
1

I am not sure if this topic is relevant to this category- feel free to re-direct me if this topic is in the wrong space.

I am working with SaaS company. We are developing a platform that allows universities to self-publish rather than using commercial publishers. We want to ensure that the content published with our platform receives a DOI (e.g. all versions of a manuscript, reviewer comments). We are thinking about using CrossRef but I have a few questions about the services and functions of CrossRef.

  1. Can CrossRef be easily integrated into our software to create a DOI? Is there an API that we can use to be integrated in our software? For example, once an article is published, we would a DOI to be automatically created and registered WITHOUT a centralized person/administrator doing this task. From my understanding, creating and registering a DOI with CrossRef requires a centralized person to do this.

  2. Articles published in our platform won’t be published in a specific journal so there won’t be an ISSN. Since content published in our software will be managed and owned by university libraries, can we use library ISSN’s to create a DOI?

  3. Is there a sales representative we can contact to discuss how we want to use CrossRef?

Many thanks,

R.

2

Hello, and thanks for your questions!

Many platforms have built integrations which enable automatic DOI registration upon publication, though I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s particularly easy to do.

You can read more about the content registration process in our documentation, but the gist is that, in order to register a DOI for a publication with Crossref, you have to submit an XML file that contains some required metadata, the DOI, and a resolution URL to our system, and the XML has to be formatted using Crossref’s specific metadata deposit schema.

There are a few ways to submit the metadata, but for your purposes, to do it programmatically, you would send it via HTTPs POST, as described here. We don’t tend to call this “an API” but that’s more or less what it is.

A single centralized administrator is not necessary, but the system credentials and DOI prefix (the part beginning with “10.” that comes before the forward slash) are specific to each organizational member.

We support a variety of other content types beyond journal articles. ISSNs only apply to serial publications like journals. Can you say more about what kind of content this is?

You can reach our Membership team at member@crossref.org and they’ll be able to explain possible options and next steps.

-Shayn

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