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Identifying and correcting invalid citations due to DOI errors in Crossref data

Author

Listed:
  • Alessia Cioffi

    (University of Bologna)

  • Sara Coppini

    (University of Bologna)

  • Arcangelo Massari

    (University of Bologna)

  • Arianna Moretti

    (University of Bologna)

  • Silvio Peroni

    (University of Bologna
    University of Bologna)

  • Cristian Santini

    (FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure
    Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute AIFB)

  • Nooshin Shahidzadeh Asadi

    (University of Antwerp)

Abstract

This work aims to identify classes of DOI mistakes by analysing the open bibliographic metadata available in Crossref, highlighting which publishers were responsible for such mistakes and how many of these incorrect DOIs could be corrected through automatic processes. By using a list of invalid cited DOIs gathered by OpenCitations while processing the OpenCitations Index of Crossref open DOI-to-DOI citations (COCI) in the past two years, we retrieved the citations in the January 2021 Crossref dump to such invalid DOIs. We processed these citations by keeping track of their validity and the publishers responsible for uploading the related citation data in Crossref. Finally, we identified patterns of factual errors in the invalid DOIs and the regular expressions needed to catch and correct them. The outcomes of this research show that only a few publishers were responsible for and/or affected by the majority of invalid citations. We extended the taxonomy of DOI name errors proposed in past studies and defined more elaborated regular expressions that can clean a higher number of mistakes in invalid DOIs than prior approaches. The data gathered in our study can enable investigating possible reasons for DOI mistakes from a qualitative point of view, helping publishers identify the problems underlying their production of invalid citation data. Also, the DOI cleaning mechanism we present could be integrated into the existing process (e.g. in COCI) to add citations by automatically correcting a wrong DOI. This study was run strictly following Open Science principles, and, as such, our research outcomes are fully reproducible.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessia Cioffi & Sara Coppini & Arcangelo Massari & Arianna Moretti & Silvio Peroni & Cristian Santini & Nooshin Shahidzadeh Asadi, 2022. "Identifying and correcting invalid citations due to DOI errors in Crossref data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3593-3612, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:6:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04367-w
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04367-w
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Junwen Zhu & Guangyuan Hu & Weishu Liu, 2019. "DOI errors and possible solutions for Web of Science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(2), pages 709-718, February.
    2. Fiorenzo Franceschini & Domenico Maisano & Luca Mastrogiacomo, 2015. "Errors in DOI indexing by bibliometric databases," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2181-2186, March.
    3. Ivan Heibi & Silvio Peroni & David Shotton, 2019. "Software review: COCI, the OpenCitations Index of Crossref open DOI-to-DOI citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(2), pages 1213-1228, November.
    4. Gorraiz, Juan & Melero-Fuentes, David & Gumpenberger, Christian & Valderrama-Zurián, Juan-Carlos, 2016. "Availability of digital object identifiers (DOIs) in Web of Science and Scopus," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 98-109.
    5. Franceschini, Fiorenzo & Maisano, Domenico & Mastrogiacomo, Luca, 2016. "The museum of errors/horrors in Scopus," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 174-182.
    6. Valderrama-Zurián, Juan-Carlos & Aguilar-Moya, Remedios & Melero-Fuentes, David & Aleixandre-Benavent, Rafael, 2015. "A systematic analysis of duplicate records in Scopus," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 570-576.
    7. Shuo Xu & Liyuan Hao & Xin An & Dongsheng Zhai & Hongshen Pang, 2019. "Types of DOI errors of cited references in Web of Science with a cleaning method," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1427-1437, September.
    8. Christophe Boudry & Ghislaine Chartron, 2017. "Availability of digital object identifiers in publications archived by PubMed," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(3), pages 1453-1469, March.
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