The Crossref Curriculum

DOI error report

The DOI error report is used for making sure your DOI links go where they’re supposed to. When a user clicks on a DOI that has not been registered, they are sent to a form that collects the DOI, the user’s email address, and any comments the user wants to share.

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We compile the DOI error report daily using those reports and comments, and email it to the technical contact at the member responsible for the DOI prefix as a .csv attachment. If you would like the DOI error report to be sent to a different person, please contact us.

The DOI error report .csv file contains (where provided by the user):

• DOI - the DOI being reported

• URL - the referring URL
• REPORTED-DATE - date the DOI was initially reported

• USER-EMAIL - email of the user reporting the error
• COMMENTS

We find that approximately 2/3 of reported errors are ‘real’ problems. Common reasons why you might get this report include:

• you’ve published/distributed a DOI but haven’t registered it
• the DOI you published doesn’t match the registered DOI
• a link was formatted incorrectly (a . at the end of a DOI, for example)
• a user has made a mistake (confusing 1 for l or 0 for O, or cut-and-paste errors)

What should I do with my DOI error report?

Review the .csv file attached to your emailed report, and make sure that no legitimate DOIs are listed. Any legitimate DOIs found in this report should be registered immediately. When a DOI reported via the form is registered, we’ll send out an alert to the reporting user (if they’ve shared their email address with us).

I keep getting DOI error reports for DOIs that I have not published, what do I do about this?

It’s possible that someone is trying to link to your content with the wrong DOI. If you do a web search for the reported DOI you may find the source of your problem - we often find incorrect linking from user-provided content like Wikipedia, or from DOIs inadvertently distributed by members to PubMed. If it’s still a mystery, please contact us.