Export vs. Registration

Before registering DOIs with mEDRA or DataCite for the first time you’ll have to decide whether you want to use the registration connector in “manual export” or “automatic registration” mode. This depends above all on your relation with the registration agency:

• If you have (or intend to have) your own account at the registration agency then automatic registration will most probably be your preferred choice. Automatic registration means that you do not have to export metadata into the registration agency’s XML format or upload files to the registration agency manually. You can register DOIs and metadata directly from within OJS with a few mouse clicks.
• If you do not have access to account credentials yourself then you’ll have to export XML files for the objects to be registered. The XML can then be sent to the account owner (e.g. as an email attachment) who’ll have to upload the files to the agency’s registration site. This is still much better than sending unformatted metadata by email. The OJS-implementation of the XML format has been explicitly certified by the registration agencies for maximum information content, standardization and data quality. Manual transfer errors can be avoided and the account owner will have much less work in uploading a ready-made XML rather than manually entering metadata on the agency’s site or composing a compliant XML message from scratch.

While, in principle, it is possible to mix both modes of operation, you should not usually do so. If, for example, you configure the DOI connectors for automatic registration and then upload a file manually to the registration agency you’ll end up in a situation where the OJS registration database is out of sync with the registration agencies’ database. This can lead to registration errors when trying to update metadata of an object that has been registered manually before. This is especially important when you work with mEDRA as the mEDRA XML format (O4DOI) differs for initial registration and metadata update.

It is not problematic, though, to use the XML export feature for local inspection of XML data that will be transferred to the registration agency via OJS later. As long as the actual registration is done in OJS, the local and remote registration databases will not get out of sync.