Am I the only one who finds it annoying that papers from SODA (I think some readers may not be algorithms researchers, so: the annual ACM–SIAM Symposia on Discrete Algorithms) don't seem to have "real" DOIs?

For instance, Agarwal and Matoušek's paper on relative neighborhood graphs from SODA 1992 can be reached via http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/139404.139416, but the ACM portal page one reaches via that link doesn't list it as having a DOI, and if one tries instead the centralized DOI server http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/139404.139416 it returns an error saying that the DOI cannot be found in their database.

This inconsistency between the two DOI servers undermines the integrity of DOIs and the lack of a robustly working DOI for these papers makes it difficult for me to give a permanent link (as opposed to a URL, which could change) to their official versions.





Comments:

brooksmoses:
2010-04-16T00:39:29Z

That does seem a bit disturbing.

However, that doesn't seem like a "not a real DOI" problem, since DOIs are assigned by whoever owns the prefix -- which, in the case of 10.1145, is the ACM. The problem seems more likely to be that it's not properly registered in the system; c.f. http://www.crossref.org/DOIComplaint/, which also looks like a good place to report the problem.

Also, given that (from what I can tell) the fees are on basis of getting the 10.1145 number, not on registering DOIs under it, there's no reason ACM shouldn't be registering these.

11011110:
2010-04-16T00:41:59Z

ACM registers the papers from their other conferences with no problems, but consistently doesn't for SODA, so I don't think it's just an oversight. Maybe it's something to do with the conference being sponsored jointly between two different organizations, so the papers aren't really theirs alone to assign DOIs to?

brooksmoses:
2010-04-16T00:49:19Z

Huh. Regardless, it seems wrong that they would assign them DOIs and not register them. And, as Crossref's complaint site implies, this affects the integrity of the DOI System and thus is a rather big deal.

brassratgirl:
2010-04-17T19:55:07Z

lame. I wonder why this is, and whether it happens for other conferences. /makes note to check

None: DOI's for SODA proceedings
2010-04-22T11:51:05Z

DOIs are assigned by owner of the publication. SIAM publishes SODA proceedings and is responsible for DOI assignment. I believe SIAM only has the last few years of SODA online. ACM cannot assign DOIs to SIAM publications.

11011110: Re: DOI's for SODA proceedings
2010-04-22T14:44:08Z

Ok, but that doesn't explain why ACM has sort-of-working unassigned DOIs for the papers, and why SIAM doesn't (as far as I know) assign DOIs for them despite allowing ACM to provide the online hosting for them.