PIDfest 26

While there are 12 DOI registration agencies listed on the DOI Foundation’s website, only two registrations are available for general-purpose scholarly use across the globe: DataCite and Crossref. DataCite and Crossref have roots serving different communities who tend to register DOIs for different kinds of content, but have expanded their scope (as expressed by their membership eligibility criteria and metadata schemas) to a point where either registration agency can meet the needs of almost any organization that wants to register DOIs. So, how should an organization think about whether to join DataCite or Crossref?

As an illustrative case, this question recently came up in the development of Canada’s National PID Strategy. As funders start to explore the practicalities of registering DOIs for their grants, they asked national PID staff which registration agency they should use. Both registration agencies have metadata schemas that can meet funders’ needs (with some minor exceptions that are being addressed), differences in fees were negligible for the funders in question, both services’ APIs were usable for the development of an integration with funders’ platforms, and testimonials showed that both DataCite and Crossref provide high-quality support to their members. In a case like this where existing integrations were not a factor, any decision largely comes down to a matter of taste in evaluating the metadata and API structures.

While this question came up in the context of DOIs for funders, it is in no way unique to that use case. Crossref and DataCite’s metadata schemas both allow you to register DOIs for the following non-exhaustive list of entities: journal articles, books, datasets, dissertations, grants/awards, peer reviews, preprints, reports, and standards. Neither registration agency focuses exclusively on any particular demographic, though both partner with a range of organizations to provide specific services (e.g., IGSN, funders, RAiD). This situation makes it difficult for neutral third parties to make useful, general, evidence-based recommendations around how to register DOIs in practice.

So, in this session you will have a chance to share your experiences evaluating DataCite in comparison to Crossref. Are there meaningful distinctions between the two services that we are missing? If you’ve recently chosen between Crossref and DataCite, how did you make that decision? If you’re in a position to guide organizations who ask which registration agency to use, how do you develop that guidance? Do any representatives from DataCite or Crossref have thoughts they would like to share? The goal is not to criticize anything in particular about either registration agency individually, but rather to point out that collectively their development has yielded the present confusing situation for prospective PID registrants.

This session could yield: Shared guidance around how organizations worldwide can choose a DOI registration agency; a community call for guidance from DataCite and/or Crossref on this question; and/or community recommendations around whether DataCite and/or Crossref should further specialize or harmonize their services to either clarify or eliminate this question.