Section outline

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    Introduction

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    • Are you wondering how your open access publications may become more easily findable?
      This self-paced course takes you through the essential topics: metadata, persistent identifiers (e.g. DOI, ROR, ORCID) and indexing (e.g. at the DOAJ). At the end, the course presents the implementation of these technical standards at a European publishing platform as a real life example.

      More courses are available at TIB's TOERN platform.

      Key takeaways: 

      • learn about rich metadata that enables findability
      • be introduced to common persistent identifiers (PIDs)  
      • learn about registration and indexing of publications

      Estimated course time: 45 minutes 

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    Glossary

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    Rich metadata makes your publications more findable

    • Metadata is defined by the National Information Standards Organization (2004) as “structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource".

      This section presents the essentials on how you can use rich metadata to your advantage.

    • Creating and using rich metadata Lesson

      This self-guided lesson includes information on metadata, common metadata formats and how a suitable publishing systems helps you in processing and creating rich metadata.
      After completion, return to the main page to test yourself in the quiz or continue with the next topic.

    • Metadata Quiz

      Go through this self-assessment to quickly test your knowledge about metadata and technical publishing standards.

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    Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are the foundations for consistent identification

    • Have you ever wondered what happens if a journal carries the same name as yours? Or if your published articles are still findable with a typo in the title? And what happens if an author changes their name?

      Persistent identifiers (PIDs) for the different parts of your publication give clarity and are instrumental for findability.

      In this coffee lecture, Nelli Taller (TIB) introduces three common identifiers: DOI, ROR, ORCID. Maybe you have come accross some of the acronyms before. Nelly Taller gives and introduction these three persistent identifiers and explains how to use them in practice.

      The video is in German but English subtitles and a transcript may be found on the AV-Portal page where the video was first published.

       

      Video: Taller, Nelli (2024). Wie nutze ich DOI, ROR und ORCID; AV-Portal: https://doi.org/10.5446/69690 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 DE)

    • Persistent Identifiers Quiz

      The video above talks about the three common identifiers DOI, ROR, ORCID. In this quiz you may test your knowledge and let us know how about your take-aways.

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    Registering your publications increases findability

    • Did you know that an incorrect, provisional or missing ISSN is one of the four most common reasons for rejection at the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)?

      Laakso et al., 2024, p. 19

    • In the report on technical publishing standards and requirements Armengou et al. (2023, p.25) detail:

      „Rich metadata and PIDs are not enough to make a resource findable. While DOI and deposition of good metadata in the process is strategically by far the most important action for making content findable, we can differentiate three additional general scenarios:

      one, a service-led process of registering a publication (through assessment of whether it adheres to its inclusion criteria, e.g. DOAJ, Scopus, etc.);

      second, depositing a publication in a institutional, subject, or generic repository (e.g. Zenodo, etc.) which also can include adherence to a set of rules while depositing a file (although they would mostly relate to basic metadata elements);

      third, being indexable by services such as BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) or Google Scholar [...]“.

      This section takes you through the first of the three scenarios, namely registering your publication with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

    • DOAJ Indexing Lesson

      This self-guided lesson presents the why and how of indexing your journal in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

      It is based on a presentation at the CRAFT-OA summer school 2025 led by Dominic Mitchel and Clara Armengou (both DOAJ). 

      Return to the main page after finishing this section and test yourself in the registration and indexing quiz.

    • Registration and Indexing Quiz

      After you have scanned the material above, you may test yourself in this short quiz.

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    How are others implementing findability? A real life example from a European publishing platform

    • Often we learn the most from real life examples. They show theoretical concepts in practice and help us in transferring these concepts to our own publishing workflows.

      We chose the case of OpenEdition as an example for how the technical aspects introduced in this self-course can be put into practice. 

      For a larger number of examples, refer to the case studies section in Armengou et al. (2023).



    • Aspects contributing to findability

      Components

      F1. Metadata are assigned a globally unique and PID

      Objects:
      - DOI: available only for some data (depending on the types and publishers' wishes)
      - Issue for resources with multiple DOIs
      - Handles generated by Isidore harvesting platform (not retrieved by OE)
      Persons:
      - ORCID
      Organisations:
      - a few IDs from Crossref Funding registry.

      F2. Data are described with rich metadata (defined by R1 below)

      - Metadata available in the OAI-PMH repository
      - Formats: DC, DC Terms, Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS)

      F3. Metadata clearly and explicitly includes the ID of the data they describe

      In the OAI repository:
      - ID from OAI
      - DOI when available

      F4. Metadata are registered or indexed in a searchable resource

      OpenEdition Search interface (search.openedition.org):
      - only a selection of data is available (some types are excluded)
      - metadata are not complete on the website.
      Metadata is also searchable in other directories (e.g. Isidore harvests OE's OAI repository)

      The table was adapted Armengou et al. (2023, p.45-46).

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    Conclusions

    • After completing this self-paced course, you are able to tell the usefulness of rich metadata, know about three common persistent identifiers, learnt about DOAJ registering and indexing, and saw a real life example of the implementation of these aspects. Or in the words of Armengou et al., 2023, p.24:

      «Findability highlights two things:

      1. The emphasis on rich metadata and globally unique and persistent identifiers clearly and explicitly included in the metadata, and

      2. The registration and indexation of a publication in repositories, search engines, aggregators, etc.»

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    Additional resources

    • If you are looking for more ressources after completing this course, maybe the following material can be a starting point.

    • FAIR Publishing Self-Assessment Grid URL

      The FAIR publishing toolkit was created by Arnaud Gingold (AMU) in 2025. It is meant to help either publishers or publishing services undertake a self-assessment of their data collections according to the FAIR principles. The final goal is to increase the data and metadata quality of their content so it becomes more easily and more broadly discoverable.

      As a self-assessment toolkit, it provides a review grid that does not include any evaluation, especially since there is no automated assessment. It instead supports a manual, but guided, adapted, and open assessment of the FAIR principles implementation.

    • CRAFT-OA Webinar “OpenAlex – a game changer for citation databases?” URL

      This 2025 CRAFT-OA webinar with Bernhard Mittermaier (Forschungszentrum Jüllich) introduces OpenAlex as an alternative to proprietory data bases.

    • CRAFT-OA Webinar: Metadata Introduction and Metadata Healthcheck with Crossref [Advanced] URL

      Are you already registering your metadata with Crossref? 
      Take a look at this CRAFT-OA webinar with Luis Montilla (Crossref) which shows the "Participation Tool" using the example of TIB Open Publishing.

    • EDCH Training Platform URL

      The EDCH training platform comprises a large number of self-paced courses in the area of open access publishing.