[Eril-l] Crossref multiple resolution of DOIs and multiple canonical archives: whither DOI vs openurl?

Thu Oct 23 06:52:36 PDT 2025

I am happy to be demonstrated wrong, but it seems to me that the problem is
one of treating an *identifier* as a *locator*. A DOI is meant to uniquely
identify a unit of scholarly expression. A link resolver might use a DOI to
help correctly identify the work it has been asked to locate, but the DOI
is not itself a location descriptor.

Treating Crossref as a link resolver seems like a bad mistake.

Anna

-----
Anna Shields (she/they)
E-resources Librarian, Interim Systems Librarian
Williams College
on the unceded lands of the People of the Waters that Are Never Still
<https://www.mohican.com/brief-history/>

as67 at williams.edu
(413) 597-2041

On Thu, Oct 23, 2025 at 9:38 AM Electronic Resources in Libraries
discussion list via Eril-l <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org> wrote:

> Hi Melissa,
>
> Thank you for bringing this up, this is a concern here too -- the multiple
> resolution screen, while somewhat rare, is confusing for both patrons and
> staff alike. Our most frequent instance of this happening is actually with
> Bloomsbury resources, with multiple resolutions to 2 different Bloomsbury
> collections. A user can't be expected to know which one they can access the
> item through, and honestly, sometimes I don't know either offhand without
> looking it up. Our e-resources team has largely avoided a stance on whether
> or not we recommend using DOIs, but I personally avoid using them,
> primarily for this reason.
>
> Gail
>
> Gail Murray (she/her)
> Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian
> Smith College Libraries
> 413.585.2925
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 20, 2025 at 8:44 AM Electronic Resources in Libraries
> discussion list via Eril-l <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi, all!
>>
>> This is about DOIs for articles that have more than one
>> "canonical"/official publisher home.
>> That can happen, and does frequently, when a journal changes publishers
>> and BOTH publishers maintain an official archive for PCA libraries.
>>
>> For instance, the 2006-2011 of the journal, Frontiers of History in
>> China, where Brill has 2006-present and Springer-Nature, the previous
>> publisher, has 2006-2011. Our only access is on SN because we did not
>> continue the subscription in 2012 when Brill got it. But the DOI in our
>> discovery service only leads to Brill, not SN.
>>
>> The NISO Journal Transfer database, https://journaltransfer.issn.org/,
>> documents when journals transfer and includes whether the archive up to
>> that point will be hosted by the transferring or receiving publisher.
>> Sometimes it is actually both.
>>
>> It was recently brought to my attention that Crossref has a "multiple
>> resolution" (MR) system, such that when following some DOI links, the user
>> gets a list of links to each of the publisher platforms that are still
>> "official" (I think by NISO's concept of that).
>>
>> I asked Crossref about what I should do to get an "MR" for this journal.
>>
>> This is part of the reply I got:
>> However, just to set expectations, multiple resolution is used quite
>> rarely.  Most publishers prefer that DOIs resolved directly to the version
>> of the content on their particular platform.   And, the feedback we get
>> from librarians about multiple resolution has honestly been primarily
>> negative, because they don't like users to be faced with another decision
>> point or extra friction in accessing the content.   (we do have a
>> workaround to 'bypass' multiple resolution, for that reason, and resolve
>> directly to either the primary or one of the secondary URLs)
>>
>> That said, the more typical solution is for libraries to link to content,
>> not directly via the DOI, but using an OpenURL link resolver or discovery
>> tool integration that will direct users to the appropriate subscription
>> version for which they have full text access.  It's possible to integrate
>> metadata from Crossref into such a tool, to facilitate linking more
>> effectively.
>>
>>
>> As I read and re-read that answer, it occurred to me to question whether
>> the entire point of the DOI system is breaking down. When Crossref itself
>> tells me not to use DOI links, but instead openurl links, which is where we
>> were 20 years ago and whose problems were a big part of the reason for
>> supporting the adoption of the DOI ecosystem in the first place, I feel
>> like we are moving backwards in a context that I thought we had solved
>> already.
>>
>> I know that DOI still works for "most" situations. But openurl also
>> worked for "most situations", and still does. I worked at a library that
>> was one of the very earliest adopters of openurl, and even wrote my own
>> openurl resolver for my library before the commercial products existed. I
>> have a long memory of how we got from there to here.
>>
>> So I wanted to consult your collective wisdom about this issue, both from
>> the immediate "best service to patrons today" perspective and the
>> "long-term where should our ecosystem be going next?" perspective.
>>
>> Your thought would be most welcome!
>>
>>
>>
>> Melissa Belvadi
>> Collections Librarian
>> University of Prince Edward Island
>> mbelvadi at upei.ca  902-566-0581
>> ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4433-0189
>> my public calendar
>> <https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/0fbab27c909e4493be65313bd66d66b6@upei.ca/5fa60af92c6d451c9ddf90c0bb11e00f15552192987609852692/calendar.html>
>> Make an appointment <https://mbelvadi.youcanbook.me/> via YouCanBookMe
>> My pronouns are ಅವರು/ಅವರನ್ನು
>> My emails are sent during the hours that I work and I understand that you
>> will respond during the hours that you work.
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