[Taxacom] In defense of DOIs

Wed Feb 17 14:12:59 CST 2010

So, why are some publishers systematically listing broken (unregistered?) DOIs for older articles? This is a real nuisance. For example, Wiley (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122242044/tocgroup ) lists DOIs for all articles in Proceedings of the Royal Entomological Society of London (B), now Systematic Entomology, but ALL these links to the older title are broken (unregistered?) as far as I can see...

Anyway, to emphasise again the problem with DOIs: they may be useful to some extent (when they work!), but if the publisher goes out of business they probably don't help, and it requires more work for the publisher to use DOIs, which detracts from the amount of stuff they can publish, particularly if they are not in business primarily for profits ...

________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Roderic Page [r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk]
Sent: Thursday, 18 February 2010 12:15 a.m.
To: Lynn Raw
Cc: Edwards, James; TAXACOM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] In defense of DOIs

Dear Lynn,

The fees you quote are for joining the DOI Foundation, which is a
complete different thing! CrossRef is a member of this Foundation, it
is the one paying those fees http://www.doi.org/membership/brochure.html

CrossRef handles DOIs for publishers, which pay a fee to CrossRef for
that service. These are outlined at http://www.crossref.org/02publishers/20pub_fees.html

For a small publisher (making < $US 1,000,000) the annual fee is $US
275. Backfile articles cost 15c per DOI, current content (defined as
2008-2010 costs $1 per DOI.

Regards

Rod

On 17 Feb 2010, at 08:35, Lynn Raw wrote:

> Jim,
>
> I am not sure where you obtained this information. This is what
> appears on the official site:
>
> Membership fees fall due annually on the anniversary of joining --
> US members will be invoiced their member fees in US$ and non-US
> members will be invoiced their member fees in GBP£. The pound
> sterling value will be calculated each year based on the US exchange
> rate set at the start of each year, currently this is $1.86:£1.
> Eligibility for Membership may be re-evaluated at each point the
> Member Agreement falls due for renewal.
> The current annual fee for General Members is $US 35,000 (GBP£18,817).
> The current annual fee for Charter Members is $US 70,000 (GBP
> £37,634), reduced to $40,000 (GBP£21,505) if the Charter Member is
> also a lender to the foundation.
> The current annual fee for Members may be reduced at the sole
> discretion of the Board, subject to a minimum fee of $US 11,500 (GBP
> £6,183) per annum. There are no differences in member rights and
> benefits between Charter and General, nor for those for which a
> reduced fee is payable. Criteria which will be considered in
> applications for such reduction include in particular any of the
> following:
>
>    * Significant role in the creation or ongoing support of the
> Foundation.
>
>    * Not-for-profit organizations, which have annual revenue, as
> measured by the most recent audited statement, of less than $US
> 10,000,000.
>
>    * For-profit organizations which have annual revenue, as measured
> by the most recent audited statement, of less than $US 10,000,000,
> and are either not majority-owned by an entity with over $US
> 10,000,000 revenue which would fulfil the criteria for IDF
> membership eligibility in its own right, or are a subsidiary of an
> existing Member of the Foundation.
>
> The current annual fee for Registration Agency Members is $US 35,000
> (GBP£18,817).
> The current annual fee for Affiliate Members is $US 2,000 (GBP
> £1,075). This is a minimum membership fee and Affiliate members are
> encouraged to donate a larger sum at their discretion.
> In general, it is likely that the cost of your fees will be
> deductible as a business expense of the joining entity. The detailed
> question of deductibility is, however, a matter for the tax advisors
> to the entity that is joining, and it is not governed by IDF's
> status as a not-for-profit entity.
>
> Lynn Raw
> London, UK
>
> On 16 Feb 2010, at 23:35, Edwards, James wrote:
>
>> Typical costs for DOIs range from US $.03 (yes, three cents!) to
>> $20 per article. So they are unlikely to be the "huge expense" for
>> a publisher that Stephen Thorpe fears.
>>
>> Jim Edwards
>> ________________________________________
>> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>> ] On Behalf Of Frederick W. Schueler [bckcdb at istar.ca]
>> Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 6:01 PM
>> Cc: TAXACOM
>> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] In defense of DOIs
>>
>> Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't deny that DOIs are "useful", and indeed I use them on
>>> Wikispecies whenever possible, though to me they are useful
>>> primarily as links to publications, rather than as identifiers per
>>> se. The question though is whether they are useful ENOUGH to
>>> justify the huge expense? On that I (and notable others, as you
>>> know from the off-list discussion) am not so sure. Is it
>>> worthwhile for a publisher to do DOIs at the expense of taxonomic
>>> output? If Zootaxa could only publish say half of its current
>>> output with the added workload created by DOIs, would this be
>>> worthwhile? I would have more confidence in  DOIs as permanent
>>> links if they were independent of publishers, so a DOI actually
>>> linked to a page hosted by the DOI people, rather than to the
>>> publishers pages, and this could best be done with open access
>>> articles. Why should the publishers have to pay for DOIs when
>>> bioinformatics people are the ones who want the DOIs most? Just
>>> like the issue of all these global biodiversity
>> databases - they are (perhaps) nice to have, but are they worth it?
>> Do they facilitate more taxonomy, or do they compete with more
>> taxonomy?
>>
>> * for those of us outside the loop, how much does a DOI for an
>> article
>> cost? If this is large (as I gather it is), what's the explanation
>> for
>> the cost?
>>
>> fred.
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>         Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
>> Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
>> Thirty Years Later Expedition - http://pinicola.ca/thirty/
>> Longterm ecological monitoring - http://fragileinheritance.ca/
>> Portraits of light - http://www.aletakarstad.com/
>> Mudpuppy Night in Oxford Mills - http://pinicola.ca/mudpup1.htm
>>    RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
>>  on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
>>   (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
DEEB, FBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
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Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
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