Hello all,
You’ve lovingly crafted what (you hope) is the perfect XML file. Or maybe you’ve just completed your first (or 570th) web deposit form. Now what?
Did it work? Is my DOI now registered? Did that update go through successfully?
There are a number of ways to verify your registration. Some we recommend above others, actually.
This month, I’d like to talk about one specific way to verify your deposits: the admin tool!
Timing
Just a word about timing before we go into verification of your deposit. On sunny days, when our submission queue is working like the well-oiled machine it usually is, and no bumps or lumps are in the road (that’s all the same metaphor, right?), an average-sized deposit can take about 5-10 minutes to process.
However, as we all know, sometimes there are clouds, bumps, and monster files. This is why we don’t recommend jumping straight into our REST API or Crossref’s metadata search, or even going to doi.org immediately after depositing your content to see if it worked. Chances are, it won’t be there. However, this doesn’t mean that your deposit failed!
What to do instead? Read on, my friend!
Admin Tool
First, I would recommend logging into the admin tool, no matter which method you used to deposit your content.
Go to the Submissions tab. Then click on the Administration tab.
Then, leave all the fields blank, click the Search button at the bottom, and voilà! There is a list of all your submissions that have made it to our system.* The good, the bad, and the ugly.
*I say “made it to our system”, because if there is an error somewhere before the file gets to our system, due to connectivity or server issues, for example, it won’t appear in the queue. And if that’s the case, then you will know that there is an error somewhere on your end.
Start/Finish
Once you’re viewing your queue, you’ll see three columns on the far right labelled Received, Started, and Finished.
This relates to my above note regarding timing. If you see that the Received column has a date in it, but the Started and Finished columns say “Never”, this means that our system got your file, and it’s waiting in the queue to process.
Don’t fear! This is a good sign. It means you just have to wait a bit longer to see the results of your deposit. If you’d like to learn more about how to view the entire system queue (this means all the deposits that are coming in from everyone), you can take a look at our documentation here. You can look at that view to see where your submission is in the log. This may be helpful if you’ve been waiting a long time and you think your submission may be stuck. There could be a lot of traffic or the queue may be suspended for a deployment, for example.
Errors/Successes
Once that Finished column is populated, this means that your submission is complete. If there is a red E next to the submission, this means the deposit contained an error.
Whether you have an error or not, you can click on the number under the ID heading (this is what we are referring to if we’ve ever asked you for the submission ID of a deposit). This will show you details of the submission. Of particular importance to you will be the field labelled “Message”. This will tell you what went wrong with the deposit, or what went right.
If you have a deposit with an error, it may not make sense to you what that error message means, but if you provide that information (along with the submission ID) in your ticket to support, we can more easily help you with what went awry.
If you scroll to the bottom of that message, you may see something like this:
<batch_data>
<record_count>24</record_count>
<success_count>0</success_count>
<warning_count>0</warning_count>
<failure_count>24</failure_count>
</batch_data>
which will tell you what was successful and what failed.
Conversely, if there are no errors, you’ll still get a message in the Message box, but it will look something like this:
<batch_data>
<record_count>24</record_count>
<success_count>24</success_count>
<warning_count>0</warning_count>
<failure_count>0</failure_count>
</batch_data>
If your submission is clear of errors and looks similar to the above message, then this means it’s been successfully deposited and should be showing in all the usual places (doi.org, the REST API, Crossref’s metadata search) in a short while.
Hopefully you’ll find this a useful way to check whether all your hard work has paid off. And, as always, reach out to us if you have additional questions.
Cheers,
Kathleen