Isaac here, Crossref Technical Support Manager.
We get a number of requests into our technical support team via email from authors, metadata users, other researchers, librarians, etc. flagging potential metadata discrepancies. Since metadata registered with Crossref is distributed out and amplified in the Research Nexus, it’s understandable why members of the community who have a vested interest in the accuracy of this metadata would come to us to ensure we get it right. We understand, but also this metadata is the metadata of our members. They have vetted it for publication and registration and are the official gatekeepers of their content and the metadata related to that content. Because of this, Crossref does not update, edit, or correct publisher-provided metadata directly.
That said, we do want the metadata to be as accurate as possible. We share that desire! Due to that shared goal, we often times do play the role of intermediary making connections between our members (and their designated metadata quality contacts) and those authors, users, researchers, librarians, and others who also want/need the metadata registered and disseminated to be correct.
We, the Crossref technical support team, wanted to share a few examples of these types of requests that we receive. We also want to encourage you to post your improvements within the metadata quality improvement category here on the forum. It’s an ambitious goal, but we hope to one day graduate to an automated system where these improvements to the metadata can be funneled directly to the people and teams at our member organizations who are best positioned to act on the improvements.
In this example, we’ve heard from one of the authors of DOI 10.55627/pbulletin.002.02.0518.
I had been published my research paper at December. But it’s DOI is not working. I am the Coauthor or this research paper. I have been submitted my complaint. But You are working on my complaint. It’s my humble request to solve my issue as soon as possible.
https://0-doi-org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/10.55627/pbulletin.002.02.0518
This is my DOI. The journal was Plant Bulitten. Please solve this problem. I am worried and disappointed😞.
Yes, I can see in this example that the DOI has not yet been registered. When I attempt to resolve it, I get an error message on doi.org - DOI NOT FOUND. That means the DOI has never been registered. Let’s see if we can help by getting in touch with the metadata quality contact associated with DOI prefix 10.55627, Roots Press.
One of the authors of the work in question has brought to our attention that the DOI 10.55627/pbulletin.002.02.0518, associated with his recent article, appears to be unregistered.
Therefore, I would like to kindly ask you to register the DOI.
Should you require any assistance during the process, feel free to ask.
Best regards,
-Isaac
Dear Isaac
Thank you for your email. we have tried but this return an error;
The following error was returned by Crossref and contains details about the cause of the error:
(401 Unauthorized)
Please assist.
Regards
Ah. Interesting. So, the member is having some technical issues registering the DOI in question using OJS. That’s too bad, but does explain the problem better. That 401 error that presents itself in the OJS Crossref XML Export Plugin is almost always explained by a mismatch between the credentials (role and/or password) entered into the plugin and the credentials stored in the Crossref system. Let’s see if we can help!
Thank you for your response.
Please take a look at our documentation page for configuring the OJS Crossref XML Export Plugin.
https://0-www-crossref-org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/documentation/register-maintain-records/ojs-plugin/In particular, this part explains that the 401 error relates to an incorrect username or password in the plugin settings.
Note: if the combination of username and password is incorrect, OJS will return a 401 unauthorized status code error at the time of registration. This error indicates that the username and password are incorrectly entered. That is, they do not match the username and/or password set with Crossref.
- If you are using organization-wide, shared role credentials, you can simply add in your shared username and password.
- If you are using personal user credentials that are unique to you, you’ll need to add your email address and your role into the username field, and your personal password into the password field. Here’s an example of what this will look like:
Username: email@address.com/role
Password: your PasswordIn your case, the username must be:
email@address.com/rootprIf you just enter the username as ‘email@address.com’ that will result in the 401 error.
Additionally please ensure that the “Use the Crossref test API (testing environment) for the DOI deposit. Please do not forget to remove this option for the production.” option is not enabled.
Moreover, if the error persists, alternatively, you can use web deposit form. We also have a web deposit form video tutorial and full instructions for using the web deposit form in our documentation.
Best regards,
Isaac
Let’s hope that’ll unlock the problem for our contacts at Roots Press. 
Hi,
Thank you for your email. The issue is now resolved.
Regards
Sure enough. Success! Now, when we resolve the DOI reported by the Coauthor, the DOI resolves to the content on the Plant Bulletin journal landing page, as you can see here: https://0-doi-org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/10.55627/pbulletin.002.02.0518
