A Crossref Member Briefing is available that explains how PubMed Central (PMC) links to publisher full text, how PMC uses DOIs and how PMC should be using DOIs. The briefing is entitled “Linking to Publisher Full Text from PubMed Central” (PDF 85k).
Crossref considers it very important the PMC uses DOIs as the main means to link to the publisher version of record for an article and we are recommending that publishers try to convince PMC to use DOIs in an automated way. Almost all of the PMC articles contain DOIs but they aren’t linked. This seems like a waste considering that publishers have invested a lot in Crossref and DOIs as unique identifiers and persistent links.
Welcome to CrossTech, a new access-controlled blog to discuss developments in the online scholarly publishing world. Crossref’s mission is to foster dialogue and information sharing among publishers to enable innovation and collaboration. In order to do things collaboratively, publishers need to share information and communicate in an appropriate manner that takes into account anti-trust and competitive issues. The online publishing world changes quickly and many developments are driven by organisations outside of scholarly publishing so CrossTech provides publishers a “protected” space to discuss issues.
