About

Metadata help

After your journal is indexed in DOAJ and you start to upload article metadata to us, we generate journal and article metadata. We make these publicly and freely available via different methods:

Our metadata is collected and incorporated into commercial discovery systems, library discovery portals and search engines around the world. Here are some of them:

  • OCLC
  • EBSCO products
  • Clarivate's Proquest and Ex Libris products
  • Clarivate's Web of Science
  • SCOPUS
  • Google Scholar
  • Google
  • Dimensions
  • CONSER's MARC records

Uploading article metadata

We are one of the most trusted and reliable providers of metadata about open access journals and articles. When publishers upload their article metadata to us, it increases the visibility of the journal and the articles.

Choose how you want to upload article metadata to us.

API

  • Speed and efficiency: high
  • Level: difficult
  • Formats accepted: JSON
  • Maximum upload limit: 50MB
  • Requirements:
  • Help available? Yes, via one of our API groups; search for 'Google Group DOAJ API' in your browser.
  • Testing available: on a case-by-case basis and only for publisher supporters
  • Documentation Yes
  • FAQS Yes
  • OJS plugin available? Yes. Refer to PKP documentation.
  • OJS support: for help, refer to the OJS Technical Forum
  • Troubleshooting uploads: please submit a bug report (via GitHub) or contact us with the following details:
    • The time of the file upload. (If you saw the error more than 12 hours ago, please try the upload again before you contact us.)
    • Whether the error happened once or repeatedly
    • The exact error message that appeared during the upload. Include a screenshot.
    • The DOAJ account ID that you are logged in with. You will find this under 'Settings' in the Dashboard dropdown menu.
    • The file(s) you had problems with
    • The ISSN(s) of the journal

XML

  • Speed and efficiency: medium
  • Level: medium
  • Formats accepted: DOAJ and Crossref XML
  • Maximum upload limit: 50MB
  • Requirements:
  • Testing available: on a case-by-case basis and only for publisher supporters
  • Documentation DOAJ XML, Crossref 5.3.1 XML, Crossref 4.4.2 XML
  • FAQS No
  • OJS plugin available? Yes. Refer to PKP documentation.
  • OJS support: for help, refer to the OJS Technical Forum
  • Help available? Yes
  • Troubleshooting uploads: if our error message definitions don't help you, please submit a bug report (via GitHub) or contact us with the following details:
    • The time of the file upload. (If you saw the error more than 12 hours ago, please try the upload again before you contact us.)
    • Whether the error happened once or repeatedly
    • Whether you are uploading DOAJ or Crossref XML
    • Whether you are uploading a file or uploading from a link
    • The exact error message shown in the 'Notes' column of the History of uploads section, including the detail under the 'show error details' link.
    • A screenshot of the error message with the 'show error details' link expanded.
    • The DOAJ account ID that you are logged in with
    • The file(s) you had problems with

Enter article metadata manually

  • Speed and efficiency: low
  • Level: easy
  • Formats accepted: text, entered via our webform
  • Maximum upload limit: N/A
  • Requirements:
    • Plain text only
    • No email addresses
    • The abstract metadata for the article: title, full-text URL, DOI (if applicable), author names, ORCiD (if applicable), affiliations, publication date, ISSN(s), Volume/Issue/Page (if applicable), abstract
  • Help available? Yes. Contact our Help Desk.
  • Testing available: on a case-by-case basis and only for publisher supporters
  • Documentation No
  • Troubleshooting: you must be careful to enter the Print ISSN and Electronic ISSN in the right field.

A note about updating articles

Sometimes article metadata needs to be updated. We use the Full Text URL and DOI, if present, to identify and match articles. If you are updating article metadata with details about authors, affiliations, year, volume, issue, etc or adding a DOI to an article that doesn't have one in DOAJ, you will be able to send us the updated metadata, using one of the methods above, without any problem.

However, if you need to update the Full Text URL or DOI of articles that already have that metadata present in DOAJ, you will need to contact us first. Submitting new FUll Text URLs or DOIs will cause duplicate articles to be created. Our preferenc here is that we delete the existing article records first.

If you do need us to delete article metadata, please contact Help Desk with the following details:

  • journal title
  • ISSN(s)
  • years to be deleted (we can only delete whole years) or if we should delete all article for a journal

We will confirm the number of articles to delete with you. Deleting articles is instantaneous and cannot be reversed.

Help with metadata uploads

My authors have multiple affiliations

We are currently unable to display more than one affiliation per author. We are investigating how we can change this. More information will be posted on our blog.

My article abstracts are in more than one language

Our XML format only supports one language for 'Article Title' and 'Abstract'. We are researching a solution that allows multiple languages to be uploaded to us and displayed.

Metadata containing multiple languages can still be uploaded to us. However, you cannot choose which language is displayed. Please only send us one language to avoid your articles being displayed in a mixture of languages.

I am seeing a 403 forbidden error

You may see the 403 forbidden error for different reasons. These apply to both the API and uploading XML.

  • ISSNs
    • You may be sending us an extra ISSN that we don’t have in your journal record.
    • You may be sending only one ISSN, but we have two in the journal record.
    • We may have the journal's ISSNs in an old version of your journal record.
  • Wrong account
    • You may be sending us an ISSN that belongs to a journal attached to a different account.
  • You are trying to update an article's Full Text URL (FTUs) or DOI
    • Two articles with the same FTU or DOI are not allowed.
    • Please contact us if you want to update the URLs or DOIs of your articles. We need to delete the old versions first.

I am seeing a timeout or a 'blocked' error

If you see a timeout error, please try splitting your upload into smaller files, even if your file is under our 50MB limit. Many may be uploading content to us, and the server is taking longer than usual to collect your file.

If you see a screen from Cloudflare that says you have been blocked, please contact us. Include a screenshot that shows the Ray ID at the very bottom of the page. We need this to troubleshoot the problem.

Downloading your metadata

You can download our metadata about your journal by downloading our CSV.

You can download your article metadata by using our API or by using our public data dump service.

Using a spreadsheet to update your journal metadata

If you received a spreadsheet from us, please complete it as soon as possible. The file sent to you contains a cover sheet with instructions, and more help is below. Once you have validated your file, you may email it back to us.

Before you send us the file, you must do two things:

  1. Convert the spreadsheet to a CSV. To do this, you will need to first delete the instructions tab and then Save as CSV. (Save in the Unicode UTF-8 format.)
  2. Validate it.

Here are some tips on how to ensure that your CSV file will pass validation:

  • make sure CSV is in UTF-8 format
  • don't change an ISSN or Title of a journal. To do this, contact Help Desk.
  • don't add a new journal to the file. To do this, submit a new application.
  • don't change the title of a column
  • don't include anything in the column other than what is asked for on the instructions tab
  • ensure no spaces are accidentally added before or after the information in each cell. This can cause the validation to fail.

Deleting a journal from the file will mean no update happens; it will not remove a journal from your account. To do this, contact Help Desk.

Validating your file

Before emailing the CSV to us, you must validate it. Do this in your Publisher Dashboard on the 'Validate your CSV' tab. If you do not see the tab, contact Help Desk.

The following warnings may be seen after validating your CSV:

Warning Explanation
Column name has mismatching case to expected header During editing, the case used in the column name has been changed. This is just a warning and does not need to be corrected for us to process the CSV correctly.
Column name is not a valid column header. Please revert it to match what was sent to you in the original file. During editing, the column name has been changed. The name must match exactly the column name in the spreadsheet sent to you.
Column name is a required column missing from this upload. Please refer to the original file and restore the column. During editing, the column has been deleted. Please refer to the original spreadsheet and restore the column.
There is no journal record in DOAJ for ISSN(s) issns. The record may not exist, or it may be withdrawn. The ISSN doesn't match a journal in DOAJ. Check it against the spreadsheet sent to you. You cannot add ISSNs to journals. If you think an ISSN is missing, contact Help Desk.
Your account account ID doesn't own the journal with ISSN(s) {issns}. You may not update it. The journal may have transferred to another owner since you received your spreadsheet or you have accidentally changed the ISSN, which matches another journal in DOAJ. Refer to the spreadsheet sent to you and correct the ISSN.
The data you supplied didn't change anything in the journal record. You can ignore this message if you haven't updated anything for this journal.
You may not change question. Please revert it to match what was sent to you in the spreadsheet. During editing, the question has been changed. The question must be exactly as it is in the spreadsheet sent to you. Please change it.
We couldn't understand the information in question

From time to time, other validation errors might be seen if one of the cells contains completely incorrect information. For example, the cell should contain a URL but it contains text. These error messages should be easy to understand but contact the Help Desk if you have questions.

Version history

This is Version 2 of our Metadata help page.

Version 2.0 (December 2023 - added the entire 'Using a spreadsheet to update your journal metadata' section)
Version 1.0 (November 2023 - created this whole page with new content)