(1)
In the last four versions of the Open Funder Registry – from v1.52 to v1.55 – many funders are missing
(a) reciprocal relationships and
(b) funder’s status.
To give but one example, in v1.51 we see that
10.13039/501100004826 Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality
(a) has been <svf:incorporatedInto>
10.13039/501100005089 Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation
(b) has fref:status/@rdf:resource=“Inactive”
However, in versions.1.52…1.55 10.13039/501100004826 is missing both <svf:incorporatedInto> and fref:status.
Yet, in those versions 10.13039/501100005089 still indicates that it <svf:incorporates> 10.13039/501100004826.
This is a problem, because in our QC we fetch all active descendants of the funders of interest, excluding inactive ones and those that have been incorporated into others, merged with others, etc. To do that, we rely on the accuracy of the relationships and statuses in the Registry. When those are inaccurate, our checking of funder labels against their DOIs and vice versa is impossible, because it turns up false positives.
I understand that it is Elsevier, and not Crossref, that curates the Registry. What I don’t understand is why Crossref cannot implement basic QC, such as checking that each relationship has its reciprocal counterpart, e.g.,<incorporates> ↔ <incorporatedInto> and reject the Registry if it does not pass the QC.
(2)
Quite often, our authors point out that the funder labels in the Registry are obsolete. For example, on 26 July 2022
Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan
was renamed
National Science and Technology Council
But this has not been reflected in the Registry.
I’ve been complaining about those problems to Crossref support for months, but to no avail.
I wonder if anyone else has been having problems with the Open Funder Registry after v. 1.51?
Alexander (‘Sasha’) Schwarzman
Content Technology Architect
Optica Publishing Group (formerly OSA)
aschwarzman@optica.org