Possible discontinuation of OAI-PMH Data Provider Registration Service

[Simeon Warner]

Hi all,

I am considering discontinuing OAI-PMH Data Provider provider registration service and am interested in feedback.

The registration service on the Open Archives website includes:

• Registration option on https://www.openarchives.org/Register/ValidateSite (could retain validation)

• Removing list of registered sites https://www.openarchives.org/Register/BrowseSites

• Registration guidelines https://www.openarchives.org/pmh/register_data_provider

I feel that in the early days of OAI-PMH (starting early 2000s!) the OAI-PMH validation and registration service was very useful as a general tool to encourage compliance with the OAI-PMH specification and to provide awareness of implementing repositories. The validator on the Open Archives website is perhaps still useful for low-level validation checks that apply to any data-provider implementation of OAI-PMH. However, there are now a number of more sophisticated and better maintained registries of OAI-PMH data providers. These include:

• ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories, https://roar.eprints.org/) e.g. record https://roar.eprints.org/89/

• OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories, https://opendoar.ac.uk/) e.g. record https://opendoar.ac.uk/repository/18

• re3data (Registry of Research Data Repositories, https://www.re3data.org/) includes info about OAI-PMH where available, e.g. https://www.re3data.org/repository/r3d100012757 (in “standards” tab)

• FAIRSharing (https://fairsharing.org/) e.g. record https://fairsharing.org/10.25504/FAIRsharing.0c1bd4 for arXiv but I don’t see mention of OAI-PMH base URL

Additionally, key aggregators (service providers in the OAI-PMH model) no longer rely on the Open Archives validation and registration services in a way they used to:

• CORE (https://core.ac.uk/)

  • “CORE uses information from various registries, such as OpenDOAR and DOAJ, to include new repositories and journals into CORE. If your repository or journal is already registered with some authoritative registry, you don't need to do anything. If your repository or journal has not been registered yet use the form to add it.” (https://core.ac.uk/faq#how-do-I-register-my-repository-or-journal-with-CORE?) — no mention of the OAI registry

• BASE (https://www.base-search.net/?l=en)

  • “We also regularly check repository directories such as OpenArchives, ROAR, and OpenDOAR, or the lists of appropriate software installations such as DSpace or OJS, and the Crossref publishing platform, and we are harvesting and indexing the content of suitable sources.” (https://www.base-search.net/about/en/faq.php#chap01) — does track the OAI registry but also ROAR and OpenDOAR

  • BASE has its own validator https://oval.base-search.net/ , and on the “other validators” tab mentions two others not including the one of the Open Archives website

• OpenAIRE (“Provide” service https://provide.openaire.eu/home)

  • Guidelines: https://openaire-guidelines-for-literature-repository-managers.readthedocs.io/en/v4.0.0/use_of_oai_pmh.html

  • Validation and Registration https://www.openaire.eu/validator-registration-guide

    • “Make sure your Repository is already registered in one of the following global registries - OpenDOAR (for Literature Repositories), Re3data (for Data Repositories) or FAIRsharing (for Data and Literature Repositories), and is compatible with the OpenAIRE Guidelines.” — no mention or requirement to use OAI validation or registry

    • The validation and registration is initiated by the repository administrators and then there is a manual exchange with OpenAIRE administrators

I am particularly interested in hearing from any services that use the Open Archives registry information, to understand how it is being used and what the impact of discontinuing the registry might be.

Cheers,

Simeon

[John Salter]

Hi All,
I don’t make use the registry as such, but I’d like to add a vote for having a validator capability somewhere. Being able to use an external service to check that my metadata is visible to external harvesters is very useful.

 

Thanks for the list of other registries too – there’s a couple of entries for my repositories that need to be updated.

COAR (Confederation of Open Access Repositories - https://coar-repositories.org/about-coar/ ) are also developing a registry. Once this is live, it might be a suitable replacement for the registry.

 

Cheers,

John

 

John Salter

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8611-8266

 

White Rose Libraries Technical Officer
Library and Research Management team, IT
University of Leeds

From: oai...@googlegroups.com <oai...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Simeon Warner
Sent: 17 June 2025 23:53
To: OAI-PMH <oai...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [OAI-PMH] Possible discontinuation of OAI-PMH Data Provider Registration Service

 

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[Paul Walk]

Just on the COAR directory of repositories which John Salter mentioned in this thread: this is the International Repositories Directory (IRD) and has been recently "soft launched" here:

https://ird.coar-repositories.org

The IRD records Base URLs and checks the availability of a functioning OAI-PMH for each repository; it also requests and records the list of supported metadata formats for each repository.

The criteria for inclusion in the IRD are simply:

- majority of repository content is open-access
- the repository is capable of responding correctly to an OAI-PMH request

In support of this, the IRD has a growing list of repository "platforms".

We could consider encapsulating the platform-registration + OAI-PMH validation part of the IRD so that this could be interrogated and updated as a separate concern, while also being used by the IRD. That would not be too difficult to achieve.

Best wishes,

Paul

[Simeon Warner]

I have spoken and/or exchanged email with the following to check for any impact on downstream services if the OAI-PMH registration service were retired:

• Petr Knoth (CORE) saw no problem in closing down the registration side
• Pedro Principe (OpenAIRE)did not see impacts on OpenAIRE's work and noted the COAR work that Paul Walk mentioned above
• Christian Pietsch (BASE) confirmed that retiring the registration service would not break anything within BASE.

Cheers,

Simeon