Registration policy

Who can register

• Registered, active journals of editorial organizations approved by Oxton, through their editors and registry operators.
• Organizations apply on the Request membership page; the ORI team reviews every application.
• Issuing new identifiers follows the plan of the organization. Identifiers already issued keep resolving whatever happens to the plan.

Assignment

• Each publication receives exactly one identifier, issued only by the ORI central server — never by the journal website.
• Before issuance, the metadata must include the original title, publication type and language, and at least one author (except correction, retraction and expression-of-concern notices).
• Public records also require the publication date and the official article address, which ORI confirms is online.
• ORI looks for duplicates (same DOI, same article address, or same title in the same journal and year) and refuses them.
• Correction, retraction and expression-of-concern notices must reference the record they concern.

Approval and reservation

• Journals can be configured so that every request is approved by an institutional administrator before an identifier is issued.
• An identifier can be reserved before publication (for example, when an article is accepted) and activated on the publication date.
• A reservation that never becomes public is cancelled; its code is never given to another publication.

Correction and updates

• The journal is responsible for the accuracy of the metadata and corrects it by updating the record; every update creates a new version (see Metadata updates).
• Corrections to the published article itself are registered as separate correction notices linked to the original record.
• The identifier, the journal and the editorial status never change through a metadata update.

No reuse

• Identifiers are never reassigned, edited or reused — including identifiers of withdrawn or retracted records and reservations that were cancelled.
• An article registered by mistake is withdrawn, not deleted, and keeps its identifier.

Scope

ORI validates the format and consistency of the metadata but does not assess the scientific merit of publications. ORI is an institutional identifier of Oxton; it is not a DOI and not a Crossref registration.

Responsibilities of the journal

• Register only its own publications, once each, with accurate metadata.
• Keep the article address online and the record up to date.
• Register corrections and retractions transparently (see Retractions and corrections).
• Protect its credentials and the access of its team (see Security).