[Eril-l] Two "home sites" for same journal, does DOI define canonical/authoritative?

Fri Sep 5 09:51:28 PDT 2025

We've had trouble with these multi-platform options and DOI links in EBSCO
KB.  Usually involves Duke ebooks.  Here is an example:
https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478002284

~~~~~ Kara S. Hart
Systems Librarian - Library & Technology Services
-
Wellesley College

On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 12:33 PM Electronic Resources in Libraries
discussion list via Eril-l <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org> wrote:

> Thank you, Susan, for that new information. I have never run into one of
> those before. If anyone has an example, can you share it so we can all see
> what it looks like? It sounds like something I'd like to share with the
> rest of our librarians.
>
> Melissa Belvadi
> mbelvadi at upei.ca
> Make an appointment: https://mbelvadi.youcanbook.me/
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org> on behalf of Electronic
> Resources in Libraries discussion list via Eril-l <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
> >
> *Sent:* Friday, September 5, 2025 10:43 AM
> *To:* Electronic Resources in Libraries discussion list <
> eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Eril-l] Two "home sites" for same journal, does DOI
> define canonical/authoritative?
>
>
> *CAUTION:* This email originated from outside of UPEI. Do not click links
> or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is
> safe. If you are uncertain, please use the Report Message button in Outlook
> and delete this email.
>
>
>
> *WARNING:* The sender of this email could not be verified and may not
> match the person in the 'FROM' field. Do not click links or open
> attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
> If you are uncertain, please use the Report Message button in Outlook and
> delete this email.
>
>
> CrossRef’s statement sounds great!  In practice, though, I see LOTS of
> DOIs that resolve to the copy on the publisher’s sales page, not to the
> licensed content, to a more restrictive version, and other variations on
> not getting the user to the copy they can access.
>
>
>
> Athena
>
>
>
> *Athena Hoeppner **(she/her/hers)*
>
> Interim Associate Dean, Resources and Discovery
>
> Discovery Services Librarian | University Librarian
>
> University of Central Florida | athena at ucf.edu
>
> Schedule Appointment
> <https://outlook.office.com/bookwithme/user/e7ed510b338643a092fb237960b6be17@ucf.edu/meetingtype/V46-JYn9vEWmqVPIUyuevA2?anonymous>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org> *On Behalf Of *Electronic
> Resources in Libraries discussion list via Eril-l
> *Sent:* Friday, September 5, 2025 9:04 AM
> *To:* Electronic Resources in Libraries discussion list <
> eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Eril-l] Two "home sites" for same journal, does DOI
> define canonical/authoritative?
>
>
>
> Maybe this clarifies it:
>
>
>
> " CrossRef DOIs conventionally link the user to a single source of
> material but, in select circumstances, an item might exist in multiple
> locations or formats. The DOI specification supports a practice called
> multiple resolution in which multiple URLs may be attached to a single DOI.
> As implemented by CrossRef, instead of delivering the user directly to
> content, the DOI resolves to an interim page containing citation metadata
> and multiple links to an item. This feature has been enthusiastically
> adopted by members who co-publish journals, as it allows them to dually
> host an authoritative version of an article."
> https://www.niso.org/niso-io/2010/06/dois-journals-linking-and-beyond
>
>
> Susan R. Barber
> Electronic Resources Coordinator
> Paul and Rosemary Trible Library
> Christopher Newport University
> sbarber at cnu.edu
>
> 757-594-7046
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 8:59 AM Electronic Resources in Libraries
> discussion list via Eril-l <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org> wrote:
>
> Thank you; a lot of this makes sense to me.
>
>
>
> However, a DOI can only ever point to one URL. There is no mechanism for a
> specific DOI to point to more than one.
>
> If an article is available on more than one platform, each will have
> different DOIs. I've seen this with JSTOR archival journal articles, for
> instance.
>
> One of the major reasons for DOIs is that if the publisher changes their
> platform so old direct article links would break, or the content is moved
> to another platform through the sale or other kind of transfer/partnership,
> the endpoint platform would tell Crossref etc. that that DOI now needs to
> point to the new location.
>
>
>
>
>
> Melissa Belvadi
>
> mbelvadi at upei.ca
>
> Make an appointment: https://mbelvadi.youcanbook.me/
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org> on behalf of Electronic
> Resources in Libraries discussion list via Eril-l <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
> >
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 3, 2025 2:34 PM
> *To:* Electronic Resources in Libraries discussion list <
> eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Eril-l] Two "home sites" for same journal, does DOI
> define canonical/authoritative?
>
>
>
>
>
> *CAUTION:* This email originated from outside of UPEI. Do not click links
> or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is
> safe. If you are uncertain, please use the Report Message button in Outlook
> and delete this email.
>
>
>
>
>
> *WARNING:* The sender of this email could not be verified and may not
> match the person in the 'FROM' field. Do not click links or open
> attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
> If you are uncertain, please use the Report Message button in Outlook and
> delete this email.
>
>
>
> Hi, Melissa,
>
>
>
> Sometimes you end up with the two sites for the same journals when a
> journal is hosted on a platform, but then for whatever reason, the
> publisher decides to host it on their own platform either additionally or
> while ending current access on the platform.
>
> However, if the publisher made a deal with the platform for them to host
> content and sell it with perpetual access rights then you still have access
> on the host site.
>
>
>
> So, for example if Journal of the Association of ABC Science didn't have
> the ability to host it on the Association website, they might make a deal
> with Science Direct to host the journal and allowed them to sell perpetual
> access rights to the consumer. In this scenario SD is acting as a hosting
> platform rather than Elsevier being the publisher.
>
>
>
> Then a decade later the Association website goes through an overhaul and
> they can host the journal themselves now. They canceled the SD contract,
> but since when they made the content originally, SD was allowed to sell it
> with par it stays on the SD platform for those years for those who
> purchased access through SD retain access to those years as they paid for
> those years with a contract that included perpetual  access.
>
>
>
> A DOI is a persistent identifier, but it does not specify a single URL, so
> it is possible the DOI may point to either or sometimes both places. If it
> points to both, there is usually a screen that comes up asking you to
> choose the platform - which confuses patrons, because they don't know which
> platform the library has the full-text with.
>
>
>
> And in some cases a journal could simply switch publishers for whatever
> reason, but again if the previous publisher was able to keep access to the
> years they published it then the DOI might show for that old publisher.
>
>
>
> I hope that makes sense.
>
>
>
> Susan
>
>
>
>
> Susan R. Barber
> Electronic Resources Coordinator
> Paul and Rosemary Trible Library
> Christopher Newport University
> sbarber at cnu.edu
>
> 757-594-7046
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 9:19 AM Electronic Resources in Libraries
> discussion list via Eril-l <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I was exploring a situation involving a journal that has both a publisher
> website with its full text archive and also some kind of partnership with
> Elsevier so it also has a full text journal "home" site on ScienceDirect.
> (SD) I've run into this before but this is the first time I explored in
> more detail because our full text rights are not the same on both platforms
> for certain archival years.
>
>
>
> I used one specific article from 2013 as my test case.
>
> Both sites give the same DOI for that article, and through Crossref, that
> DOI takes you to the SD site, not the publisher site.
>
> I then tried searching the article title on Crossref just to be safe, and
> that too led to only one DOI which was the SD one.
>
>
>
> I am deliberately not naming the journal because the official information
> we got from the publisher is that they don't offer post-cancellation access
> (PCA, also sometimes called "perpetual access rights" or PAR), and we don't
> currently subscribe, and I don't want to draw attention to the fact that we
> do have PCA on SD for the years we paid for in the past, just not on the
> publisher website.  I have also verified that our access is not part of our
> "Big Deal" package with SD.
>
>
>
> What's going on here? Have any of you explored this kind of situation in
> more detail to figure out what's going on?
>
>
>
> More generally, what does it mean to the Schol Comm world for a journal to
> have apparently two co-equal (in an authoritative sense) home sites? If a
> citation to this article in another peer-reviewed journal gave the
> publisher's URL rather than using the DOI, would they be 'wrong'?
>
> I can see authors thinking the publisher's site is the "official" one.
> Does DOI override that? Should peer reviewers pay any attention to this, or
> journal editors?
>
>
>
>
>
> 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.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Eril-l mailing list
> Eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
> http://lists.eril-l.org/listinfo.cgi/eril-l-eril-l.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Eril-l mailing list
> Eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
> http://lists.eril-l.org/listinfo.cgi/eril-l-eril-l.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Eril-l mailing list
> Eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
> http://lists.eril-l.org/listinfo.cgi/eril-l-eril-l.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.eril-l.org/pipermail/eril-l-eril-l.org/attachments/20250905/6c5bc553/attachment.htm>