DOI illusion

Moustafa, K.

doi:10.1016/j.rceng.2024.04.002

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Moustafa" "autores" => array:1 [ 0 => array:3 [ "nombre" => "K." "apellidos" => "Moustafa" "email" => array:1 [ 0 => "khaled.moustafa@arabixiv.org" ] ] ] "afiliaciones" => array:1 [ 0 => array:2 [ "entidad" => "The Arabic Preprint Server (ArabiXiv)" "identificador" => "aff0005" ] ] ] ] "titulosAlternativos" => array:1 [ "es" => array:1 [ "titulo" => "El espejismo del DOI" ] ] "textoCompleto" => "Digital object identifiers (DOIs) are hyperlinks to guide readers to the origins of online publications. While widely used in the publishing industry nowadays, DOIs are not an essential component of the publishing process. Before the 2000s, scholarly journals operated successfully without DOIs and can still do so.<a class="elsevierStyleCrossRef" href="#bib0510">11</a> Journals now even function in a continuous publishing approach, releasing articles online as soon as they are completed, eliminating the need to wait for a compiled issue and ensuring that readers and professionals stay up to date in their respective fields.<a class="elsevierStyleCrossRef" href="#bib0005">1</a> Originally crafted to safeguard content from unauthorized reproduction and distribution,<a class="elsevierStyleCrossRef" href="#bib0010">2</a> DOIs links have limited utility in scholarly publications, contrary to the claims and praises made about them. In their current form and function, the sole purpose of DOIs is simply to locate online publications to their web sources, no more no less.<a class="elsevierStyleCrossRef" href="#bib0015">3</a> Often composed of obscure symbols and numbers, DOI links lack clarity and meaning, offering no added value over common web links. Not because the DOIs are widely used, they are useful. In print journals or publications, DOI links are meaningless and entirely useless as their function is to locate online content only.The DOI originated as an industrial tool to facilitate commercial transactions between publishers and customers, aiming to manage permissions and copyright protection, similar to software serial keys. However, this industrial approach falls short in genuinely identifying scholarly contents. DOI links primarily serve as locators for digital publications rather than true identifiers. Additionally, the current DOI management policy harbors a notable flaw in validating software reproducibility, posing some potential security risks.<a class="elsevierStyleCrossRef" href="#bib0020">4</a>The value of publications lies in their content and relevance, rather than in the presence or absence of DOI links. The utility of DOIs in science publishing is therefore illusory for several reasons, among them:<ul class="elsevierStyleList" id="lis0005"><li class="elsevierStyleListItem" id="lsti0005">1DOIs and print publications: DOI links exclusively connect online digital publications to their web sources, making them impractical in print formats. Examining any print publication with a DOI will reveal that its DOI is entirely useless. Printed DOIs links often lack identifying information and cannot be clicked to have such information. If no other argument against DOIs is considered than this, it should be enough to reconsider DOIs value and usability. DOIs are locators rather than identifier or indicators of publication importance or quality, no more, no less.</li><li class="elsevierStyleListItem" id="lsti0010">2DOIs and persistence: The idea that DOIs are persistent is a misconception and a complete illusion. If a publication source is moved or its website broken, DOI links become broken as well unless they are updated. DOIs are rather source-dependent, not inherently persistent as it is often proclaimed. Having DOIs does not mean well preserved.<a class="elsevierStyleCrossRef" href="#bib0025">5</a> Between 2000 and 2019, more than 170 open-access journals had disappeared from the Internet along with their DOI assigned content. <a class="elsevierStyleCrossRef" href="#bib0030">6</a></li><li class="elsevierStyleListItem" id="lsti0015">3DOI and metrics: While DOIs can help in scientometrics studies, relying solely on them overlooks essential factors in metrics analysis, including the availability of bibliographic data, readers’ interests and attentions, and marketing strategies. DOIs alone do not guarantee importance or visibility; rather, visibility relies on utility and discoverability through search engines, indexing services, and marketing efforts. Altmetrics, which capture the interaction of people on social media, are now part of the outreach package of scholarly publications and impact.<a class="elsevierStyleCrossRef" href="#bib0035">7</a> A bibliometric analysis of up to 30 journals of internal medicine in Europe reveals that many of them adhere to high standards<a class="elsevierStyleCrossRef" href="#bib0040">8</a> none of these appear to be related to the mere presence of DOIs. In other words, the DOI is not an indicator of quality, but a simple external link.</li><li class="elsevierStyleListItem" id="lsti0020">4DOI and citation: DOI links are utilized in citations; nevertheless, they often lack crucial information about the author, publishing journal, or the published article, rendering them no more advantageous than regular web links. Whether employing DOI links or URLs, the objective remains the same: linking to the original publishing source. Despite citation inconsistencies across various bibliography databases,<a class="elsevierStyleCrossRefs" href="#bib0500">9,10</a> DOI links do not offer significant advantages over conventional web links or contribute to reducing such discrepancies.</li></ul>To address these limitations, DOI links should be rethought towards more informativeness and clarity. Alternatively, a new identification system called DOP (short for “Date of Publication”) can be developed for scholarly publications.<a class="elsevierStyleCrossRef" href="#bib0520">12</a> DOP identification could be based on four pivotal publication variables: 1) the main author’s name, 2) the journal’s name or its abbreviation, 3) the Date of Publication (hence DOP), and 4) the time of publication. A paper written by author A and published in journal J on date D and time T could be identified using a DOP identifying format as follows: DOP>AuthorA/JournalJ/D/T, where D refers to the publication date (per year, month, and day), while T signifies the time of publication (per hour, minute, and second).The DOP system can provide several advantages compared to the current DOI system. First, DOP links are not only informative and human-readable but also standardizable and alignable with common citation formats that use the four aforementioned variables. Second, unlike DOI, DOP links can be functional in both digital and print publications, contrary to the DOI that is limited to online content only. Third, as DOP links include date stamps, they serve to establish priority and prevent scope creep. Lastly, it would be possible to establish a comprehensive DOP-index and bibliography database, consolidating publications from various sources, in line with a previous proposal for DOI itself.<a class="elsevierStyleCrossRef" href="#bib0015">3</a>The potential drawback of the DOP system lies only in the diversity of date and time formats across different time zones. However, this minor issue can be addressed by either adopting the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) format or by using abbreviations for the hour (hh), minute (mm), and second (ss). For example, the aforementioned DOP link can be written as follows: AuthorA/JournalJ/YY2022M12D30/hh11mm15ss45 (YY: year, M: month, D: day; hh: hour; mm: minute, and ss: second). While incorporating semantic components such as names of authors and journals into URL links may increase their length, the primary focus should be on identifying manuscripts more efficiently than focusing on visual aesthetics. DOP links can thus identify manuscripts more meaningfully and straightforwardly even in print publications.In summary, the utility of DOIs is highly questionable due to two major flaws. Firstly, in print publications, DOI links often lack identifying information about the referenced publications, rendering them pointless. Secondly, for online publications, access to the internet is necessary to retrieve the linked paper and obtain relevant information, making the DOI useless in offline scenarios as well. These two challenges, among others, underscore the need to reconsider the DOI approach or to explore alternative identifiers like the one proposed here (DOP)." 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Moustafa,, DOP: toward an open-source and informative alternative to the DOI linking system, 2022, September 9: <a target="_blank" href="https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/w6vf3">https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/w6vf3</a>." ] ] ] ] ] ] ] ] "idiomaDefecto" => "en" "url" => "/22548874/0000022400000005/v3_202405260719/S2254887424000493/v3_202405260719/en/main.assets" "Apartado" => array:4 [ "identificador" => "71813" "tipo" => "SECCION" "en" => array:2 [ "titulo" => "Correspondence" "idiomaDefecto" => true ] "idiomaDefecto" => "en" ] "PDF" => "https://static.elsevier.es/multimedia/22548874/0000022400000005/v3_202405260719/S2254887424000493/v3_202405260719/en/main.pdf?idApp=WRCEE&text.app=https://www.revclinesp.es/" "EPUB" => "https://multimedia.elsevier.es/PublicationsMultimediaV1/item/epub/S2254887424000493?idApp=WRCEE"]

Revista Clínica Española (English Edition)

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Revista Clínica Española published its first issue in 1940 and is the body of expression of the Spanish Society of Internal Medicine (SEMI).
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Vol. 224. Issue 5.

Pages 334-335 (May 2024)

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