DataCite Commons display inconsistency

DataCite Chat Room
1

Good afternoon

I don’t know if this is the appropriate place to ask this question, but I’ve noticed an inconsistency in how some of our records are displayed on DataCite Commons.

We have a suite of tools which we use to template out the DataCite XML from our own metadata system. This fills in most of the content of the XML, with just a few minor things we need to add manually. We then have a set of scripts which validates the XML and checks for inconsistencies and then another script which publishes the XML to DataCite and links the URL to obtain the DOI.

Recently, a couple of us noticed that despite using the same set of tools, some of our records were appearing with a link to the NERC Environmental Data Service (DataCite Commons), while others were not. Having looked at the XML we have on our system here and a couple of the affected records in Fabrica, I can’t seem to see anything different between the two records that would cause this inconsistency. Clicking on the link above lists all the NERC EDS datasets. Even within that list, there are some with the working link and some without.

Is there some internal working on the DataCite end which somehow carries out this mapping that’s occasionally failing or is it something that we’re missing from our end?

This is an example of a DataCite Commons entry which has the mapping: DataCite Commons

This is an example of an entry without one: DataCite Commons

Thanks in advance!

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2

Hi Tim, and welcome to PID Forum! This was an interesting one to dig into, but looking at the JSON version of the metadata, the key difference is that the one with the mapping on DataCite Commons includes this:

"container": {},

while the one without the mapping only has:

"container": {
  "type": "DataRepository",
  "identifier": "https://www.changing-arctic-ocean.ac.uk/project/eispac/",
  "identifierType": "URL"
},

I think this mirrors the relatedIdentifier metadata for the latter, which has:

<relatedIdentifier
 relatedIdentifierType="URL"
 relationType="IsPartOf"
 resourceTypeGeneral="InteractiveResource">
  https://www.changing-arctic-ocean.ac.uk/project/eispac/
</relatedIdentifier>

Looking at the source of the DataCite Commons page for that item, there is an empty link to that URL https://www.changing-arctic-ocean.ac.uk/project/eispac/ at the circled point in this screenshot:

image
image850×129 39.5 KB

That suggests that maybe if you add a Title (element 20.3 in the schema) to the relevant relatedItem it might appear as intended?

Someone from the DataCite technical team would be able to confirm or correct my hunch though…

2 Likes
3

Thanks for the response. It certainly was an interesting issue to discover!

Element 20.3 is a recent addition as part of version 4.4 of the DataCite schema and currently our scripts and processing workflow are still using version 4.3 (upgrades are planned, but we are a small team!) so I’m not sure if that will solve the issue. Especially since sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t, yet our schema version hasn’t changed. However, based on your comment, I wonder if it could be related to the fact that we’re no longer using the most recent schema version?

It’ll be interesting to hear what the DataCite technical team have to say! :).

4

Hi both,

Thanks Jez.

Tim, it would be great if you could send this over to support@datacite.org so we can get the technical team to have a look at this.

Thanks!

The DataCite team!

5

I have now emailed the support team. Thanks for your assistance!

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