What happens if an article is accepted and is assigned a ‘pending publication’ DOI, but is then withdrawn from publication? What happens to the DOI? Should it be pointed at a landing page saying the article will never be published, or is a change made to the Crossref-hosted landing page? Or can the DOI be recycled?
Hi, and thanks for your question.
In the event that the article is withdrawn, the metadata should be updated to reflect that withdrawal. How you do that will differ depending on whether you use our Crossmark service or not. There are full details on our documentation site.
We also have an example metadata deposit for a pending pub DOI which reflects a withdrawal.
DOIs should definitely not be “recycled” in any scenario - whether they’ve been registered as pending publications or not.
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Thanks @Shayn. I note that the Intent Statement for a withdrawn article says ‘The article has been withdrawn according to the Crossref Policy on Article in Press Withdrawal’. What/where is the Crossref Policy on Article in Press Withdrawal?
Hi Rhiannon,
I can see how that could be misleading.
That example deposit, like all our example xml, uses fake metadata for a fake article in a “journal” that we’ve created for the purposes of testing and illustrating various metadata configurations and services.
That intent statement is also fabricated, as if Crossref were the article’s publisher. So, the idea is that each publisher has their own editorial policies, including one which covers withdrawals, and that’s what should be referenced in the intent statement in the case of a withdrawal of a pending publication DOI.
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