You should be able to find all the information you need about CrossRef fees and rules at:

http://www.crossref.org/02publishers/20pub_fees.html

and

http://www.crossref.org/02publishers/59pub_rules.html

Information about the system of registering and maintaining DOIs is at:

http://www.crossref.org/help/

Note that as well as registering DOIs for the articles in LLT, LLT would be obliged to link to the articles cited by LLT articles (for cited articles that have DOIs too). Looking at the LLT site, it looks like they would have to change their 'abstract' pages to 'abstract plus cited refs', or change the way that their PDFs are created so that they include DOI links for cited references. (Without this the whole system would fail: publishers would expect traffic to come to them, but wouldn't have to send traffic elsewhere).

I'd agree that DOIs are in general a Good Thing (and for e-books / e-book chapters, and reference work entries as well as e-journal articles). The CrossRef fees are deliberately set so as not to exclude single-title publishers. Here's an example of a single-title, university-based e-journal in the UK that provides DOIs, so it must be a CrossRef member: http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/journal/.


Terry Bucknell
Electronic Resources Manager
University of Liverpool


-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind
Sent: 17 November 2009 23:20
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Assigning DOI for local content

So I have no actual experience with this.

But you have to pay for DOI's.  I've never done it, but I don't think 
you neccesarily have to run your own purl server -- CrossRef takes care 
of it.  Of course, if your documents are going to be moving all over the 
place, if you run your own purl server and register your purls with 
CrossRef, then when a document moves, you can update your local purl 
server; otherwise, you can update CrossRef, heh.

It certainly is useful to have DOIs, I agree.  I would suggest they 
should just contact cross-ref and get information on the cost, and what 
their responsibilities are, and then they'll be able to decide.  If the 
'structure of their content' is journal articles, then, sure DOI is 
pretty handy for people wanting to cite or link to those articles.

Jonathan

Ranti Junus wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I was asked by somebody from a college @ my institution whether they
> should go with assigning DOI for their journal articles:
> http://llt.msu.edu/
>
> I can see the advantage of this approach and my first thought is more
> about whether they have resources in running their purl server, or
> whether they would need to do it through crossref (or any other
> agency.) Has anybody had any experience about this?
>
> Moreover, are there other factors that one should consider (pros and
> cons) about this? Or, looking at the structure of their content,
> whether they ever need DOI? Any ideas and/or suggestions?
>
>
> Any insights about this is much appreciated.
>
>
> thanks,
> ranti.
>
>