Technical aspects of publication in several languages -how to link digital object identifiers (DOIs)

Abstract

We consider the problem of publishing in several languages and review related technological, bibliometric and ethical problems. The existing practices include a) using the same DOI assigned by the same publisher to all versions of the paper, b) using different DOI assigned by the same publisher to different versions of the paper, c) using different DOIs assigned by different publishers to different versions of the paper published in different journals. There are solutions for linking publications in several languages, such as Math-Net.Ru, but they only partially solve the outlined problems. In this paper, we analyse pros and cons of different options and propose the way of linking DOIs of the versions of the paper by using the relations mechanisms provided by Crossref. We describe how this mechanism can be used by international and Russian journals. The proposed solution allows linking the DOIs of the Russian and English versions of the same paper in the journals published by different publishers. If adopted widely, this solution would not only exclude ethical problems in publishing translations, but would also allow abstracting and indexing services to correctly count citations to articles published in several languages.