# Policies of the Smart Scholars DOI Registry — version 1.1

*Version 1.1, approved by Smart Scholars on 1 October 2026 and in force from 2 October 2026, except the DOI System Metadata requirement of section 2, in force from 1 January 2027, more than 90 days after publication, as section 0 requires. What changed from version 1.0 is listed at the end. Version 1.0 (in force from 1 October 2026) stays readable on this page. The technical rules these policies rest on are the registry's Rules page, and the DOI System Metadata it requires is specified on its own page; where they and these policies say the same thing in different words, the rules and the specification govern the software and these policies govern people.*

## 0. About these policies

The Smart Scholars DOI Registry is operated by Smart Scholars, Hyderabad, India. It assigns DOI names to scholarly works — journal articles, issues and journals, books and chapters, conference papers, dissertations, reports and datasets — holds the record that describes each work, and keeps every DOI resolving to the work for as long as the DOI system exists.

These policies bind three parties: the **registry** (Smart Scholars, as its operator), every **registrant** (a publisher, institution, society or other organisation that holds a prefix and registers DOIs under it), and anyone who **uses** a DOI or its metadata. They apply to every DOI the registry holds, whether registered here or brought in from another Registration Agency.

A policy changes only by a new numbered version, published on the registry's policies page with the date it takes effect. A change that adds a duty to registrants or a fee takes effect no sooner than 90 days after it is published; every registrant is told by e-mail on the day of publication. Earlier versions stay readable on the same page.

## 1. DOI naming policy

**A name is forever.** A DOI name, once given, identifies one work and is never given to another, never changed and never deleted — not after a withdrawal, not after a transfer, not after the registrant leaves. Every commitment below follows from this one.

**One work, one DOI.** A work receives exactly one DOI. A work published a second time — on a new site, in a new volume, under a corrected or reworded title — keeps the DOI it already has; the registry refuses to register a second DOI for a work whose authors, pages and container match a work it already holds, and names the existing DOI instead. A genuinely new version that must be citable on its own (a corrected edition, a translation, a dataset's new release) is a new work and may have its own DOI, with the relation between the two stated in the metadata.

**What a name is.** A DOI name is a prefix and a suffix separated by a slash (`10.46243/jst.2025.v10.i12.pp35-41`). The prefix belongs to the registrant. The suffix is chosen by the registrant, or made by the registry from the registrant's pattern, or made opaque (eight symbols with no meaning). Names are case-insensitive: two spellings that differ only in case are one name.

**What a suffix may not carry.** Nothing that changes: no personal name, no e-mail address, no date of a future event, no version number that a correction would falsify, no ownership word. Nothing may be read into a suffix, and the registry promises no meaning for one. A suffix made here uses only lower-case letters, digits and `. - _ ( ) ;`, so that it travels through a URL, an e-mail and a printed citation unchanged.

**Prefixes.** A prefix is allocated to one registrant and is theirs while they are a registrant. A registrant may hold more than one prefix (one per imprint, for example) and may bring a prefix it already holds at another Registration Agency, with that agency's records, into this registry. A prefix that has been used is never re-allocated to another registrant; it is transferred whole, with every DOI under it, or retired with every DOI under it still resolving.

**Test names.** A registrant may be given a test prefix. Names under it are for trying things and are not DOIs: they resolve only here, are not counted, and may be cleared at the registrant's request.

## 2. Metadata policy

**What is registered.** A DOI is registered with a record in the Smart Scholars DOI Metadata Format 1.0, which carries every element the DOI system's Kernel requires — the work's identifiers, its title, its type, the people and organisations responsible for it, its dates, and the works it is part of — and, beside them, what journals, indexes and readers need: the container (journal, volume, issue, pages, ISSN), the abstract, the licence, the language, the references, the authors' ORCID iDs and affiliations, and the addresses of the full text. A record that does not meet the format is refused at registration, in words, listing every rule it fails; nothing is registered until it does.

**The DOI System Metadata.** Every record is also read as the DOI System Metadata — the elements the DOI Handbook's System Metadata Model and ISO 26324:2025 (Annex B) give every DOI name: the name itself, its other identifiers, the names the work is known by, its type and sub-type, its basic metadata, the Registration Agency that issued it and the date it was issued. The basic metadata each kind of work needs is set out, kind by kind, in the registry's specification (DOI System Metadata, version 1.0, published on the registry beside these policies): for a journal article, at least its publication date and the journal it belongs to; for a book, its date and publisher; for a dataset, its date and publisher; and so on for every kind the registry registers. Every record's page shows whether the record carries all of it and, if not, what is missing. **From 1 January 2027 a new DOI is registered only with a record that carries all of it.** A record registered before that date is never refused for it, though its page goes on saying what is missing until the registrant adds it; a DOI brought in from another Registration Agency is held as that agency registered it.

**Accuracy and completeness are the registrant's duty.** The registrant warrants that every record it registers is accurate and complete to the best of its knowledge, describes the work as published, and names the right authors in the right order. The registrant keeps the record current: a change to the work (a correction, a change of title or authorship, a retraction, a move to a new address) is registered here within 30 days of the change.

**What the registry checks.** Before registration the registry checks that the record meets the format, that the DOI's address is on the public web (an address on a private or local network is refused, because no reader could reach it), answers and belongs to the registrant, that the ISSN or ISBN named is the container's own, that the work is not already registered under another name, and that a licence named is a licence. It does not judge the scholarly content of a work. After registration the registry re-reads each record from time to time and tells the registrant, in words, what no longer holds — an address that has stopped answering, a container whose ISSN has changed, a reference that resolves to nothing.

**Correction.** The registry corrects a record only at the registrant's instruction, or, where a record is provably wrong in a matter of fact (a DOI pointing at the wrong work, an ISSN that belongs to another journal), after telling the registrant and giving it 14 days to answer. Every correction is a new version of the record with the change written in the DOI's public history: nothing is altered silently, and every earlier version stays readable.

**Openness.** The metadata of a registered work is public. Anyone may read it, search it, download it in bulk and reuse it without asking, for any purpose, in any form, with no fee and no restriction, save that the registry itself is not misrepresented as the author of the work. By registering a record the registrant grants this to everyone. A registrant that supplies an abstract or a reference list warrants that it may be distributed on the same terms. Every DOI's public record names the Registration Agency that issued it and the date it was issued — decided by the prefix the name is under, never by what a record says of itself.

**Quality over time.** The registry publishes, for every registrant and every prefix, how complete the records are — how many carry an abstract, a licence, references, ORCID iDs, affiliations and full-text addresses. A registrant whose records fall below the format's minimum after registration is asked to bring them up; the DOIs keep resolving meanwhile, because a DOI's resolution never depends on the quality of its metadata.

## 3. Persistence and withdrawal policy — removal without breaking DOIs

**A DOI never stops resolving.** Every DOI the registry holds resolves to something for as long as the registry exists, and the registry has arranged for its DOIs to keep resolving if it does not (section 5, continuity). A DOI is never deleted, and a name is never re-used.

**Resolution.** A DOI resolves through the Handle System, the DOI system's resolution service, at doi.org. The registry runs its own Handle service, at hdl.smartscholars.in, and keeps every name it holds there in step with the address the registry holds, carrying each change of address to it as the change is made. Until Smart Scholars is a Registration Agency, a DOI under another Registration Agency's prefix resolves at doi.org through that agency, as it must; the registry's own service resolves the same names from the registry's own records.

**Withdrawal.** When a work is withdrawn — removed from publication, found to have been registered in error, or one that must not be reached — the registrant withdraws the DOI with a reason. The name stays, the record stays, the last address is remembered, and the DOI resolves to a page that says the work was withdrawn and why, with the record beside it. A withdrawn DOI can be restored. It is never re-registered for another work.

**Retraction is not withdrawal.** A retracted article stays published, with its retraction notice, and its DOI keeps resolving to it: the scholarly record must show that it existed and was retracted. The registrant updates the record to say so and registers the retraction notice with a DOI of its own, related to the article. The registry follows the Committee on Publication Ethics' retraction guidelines in what it asks of registrants here.

**When content moves.** A registrant that moves a work — a new site, a new domain, a new publishing platform — updates the DOI's address before the old one stops answering. The registry reads every address regularly and tells the registrant, in words, when one has stopped answering; a DOI whose address has been dead for 90 days without an answer from the registrant is pointed at the registry's own record page for the work, so that it still resolves to a description and the last known address, and is pointed back the moment the registrant gives a working one.

**When a registrant leaves.** A registrant that closes, stops publishing or ends its agreement leaves every DOI it holds resolving. Its prefix and DOIs are transferred to a successor the registrant names, or to another registrant that takes the works over, or, failing both, are kept by the registry, resolving to the last address and then to the record page. No DOI is deleted because its registrant has gone, and no fee is charged for this.

**Two DOIs for one work.** Where a work turns out to have two DOIs — one from a second registration, one from another agency — the DOI printed in the published work is the one that stands, because it is already in reference lists and in the copies readers hold. The other is marked as a duplicate of it in both records and resolves to the same work. Neither is deleted.

**Legal removal.** Where the law requires content to be taken down, the registrant takes the content down and withdraws the DOI with the reason "removed on legal grounds"; the DOI resolves to the withdrawal page, which states that and nothing of the content. The registry removes metadata only where the law requires that too, and records that it did in the DOI's history.

**Continuity.** Every night the registry writes a complete, open, checksummed copy of every DOI, every record and every change in its history in plain files that need no software of ours to read, and keeps it in more than one place. Smart Scholars will lodge that copy with a third party under a continuity agreement, so that if Smart Scholars ceases to operate the registry, the DOI Foundation and a successor can keep every DOI resolving from that copy. The current arrangement: the set is published on the registry's escrow page every night and committed the same night to Smart Scholars' private escrow repository on GitHub, where every night's set is kept; a Google Drive copy follows; the third-party agreement is stated here when it is made.

## 4. Privacy notice

*This notice is written for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the rules made under it, as they come into force. It will be revised as those rules come into force.*

**Who.** Smart Scholars, Hyderabad, India, operates the registry and is the data fiduciary for the personal data described here. Contact for anything in this notice: mou@smartscholars.in.

**What personal data the registry holds, and why.**

- *Registrants' contact people:* name, e-mail address and, where given, telephone number and role — to run the registrant's account, send the notices these policies require, and answer the registrant. Kept while the registrant is a registrant and for three years after, because the history of every DOI records who acted.
- *Members who sign in:* e-mail address, a hashed password (the password itself is never stored), the second sign-in factor where set, when they signed in, and the network address of a failed sign-in (to slow down password guessing: five failures on an e-mail or twenty from one address in fifteen minutes, and the next attempt waits). Kept while the account exists; failed-sign-in records are counted for fifteen minutes and deleted within a day.
- *Authors and contributors named in metadata:* names, ORCID iDs, affiliations and roles, as the registrant supplies them in a work's published record. These describe a published work and are public bibliographic data; they are held and distributed as the metadata policy says, for as long as the DOI exists, because the DOI's record is the permanent description of the work. A person named in a record who believes the record is wrong writes to the registrant that published the work, or to the registry, which passes the request to the registrant and records the outcome.
- *The DOI's history:* every change to a record names who made it — a member by name, a program, or the registry — and when. This is kept permanently; it is the ledger the DOI system requires.
- *Readers of the registry's public pages:* the registry's own pages keep no account of who reads them beyond the web server's ordinary access logs (network address, page, time), which the hosting provider keeps for a limited period for security; Smart Scholars does not use them to identify readers. Visits are also counted by Smart Scholars' own analytics server, without cookies and without keeping a reader's network address: what is kept is the page, the site that linked to it, and broad facts such as the kind of browser and the country — nothing that identifies a reader. No advertising and no tracking of readers across sites.

**What the registry does not do.** It does not sell personal data, does not use it for advertising, and does not share it with anyone except: the registrant a person is connected with; the DOI Foundation and other Registration Agencies, to the extent the DOI system's rules require metadata and the name of the registering party to be shared; the registry's hosting providers, who process it on Smart Scholars' instructions; and a lawful authority on a lawful demand.

**Rights.** A person may ask what personal data the registry holds about them, ask for it to be corrected or completed, and ask for it to be erased where the law allows — a registrant's contact details after the retention above, an account, a reader's log entry — but not the record of a published work or a DOI's history, which the law of the DOI system and these policies require to be kept. A request is answered within 30 days at mou@smartscholars.in. A grievance not resolved there may be taken to the Data Protection Board of India once it is in operation.

**Where the data is.** On Smart Scholars' web host and its own server, and in the encrypted nightly backup copies. The registry's Handle service holds DOI names and their addresses only — no personal data. Access is by named people at Smart Scholars, each with their own sign-in and a second factor.

## 5. Registrant terms

**Who may be a registrant.** A publisher, a university or college, a research institute, a learned society, a library, a company or an individual scholar who publishes works and is responsible for them. A registrant registers only works it publishes or is responsible for, and holds the rights needed to distribute their metadata as the metadata policy says.

**The agreement.** A registrant signs Smart Scholars' online services agreement, which incorporates these policies. The agreement names the registrant, its contact people and its prefixes.

**The registrant's duties.** To register accurate and complete metadata and keep it current (section 2); to keep every DOI's address answering and update it when a work moves (section 3); to register one DOI per work and never a second (section 1); to withdraw, not delete, and to say why; to answer the registry's notices within the time each policy gives; to pay the fees in the fee schedule; and to tell the registry within 30 days of a change of name, ownership or contact.

**The registry's duties.** To register a DOI within one working day of receiving a record that meets the format, and normally within minutes; to keep every DOI resolving (section 3); to hold every record and its full history and make them public (section 2); to answer a registrant's question within two working days; to keep the continuity copy (section 3); to give 90 days' notice of any change that adds a duty or a fee; to keep secret the keys it holds to the DOI system and to registrants' data — encrypted where they are stored, never shown on a page, in a log or in a message — and to replace a key the same day if it has been seen anywhere else; and to tell registrants of any incident affecting their data within 72 hours of learning of it.

**Suspension.** The registry may suspend a registrant's right to register new DOIs — never the resolution of existing ones — while a fee is more than 60 days overdue, while a registrant is registering works it has no right to, or while it ignores a correction notice about a record that is provably wrong. Registration resumes when the cause is put right.

**Ending.** Either side may end the agreement with 90 days' notice. On ending, section 3 applies: every DOI keeps resolving and the prefix moves or stays as the registrant chooses. Registration fees already paid are not refunded; no fee is charged for the transfer of a prefix on ending.

**Liability.** The registry is responsible for keeping DOIs resolving and metadata available as these policies say. It is not responsible for the content of a work, for the accuracy of metadata a registrant supplied, or for a work being unreachable at an address the registrant has not kept working. Neither side is liable to the other for indirect loss. The registry's total liability to a registrant in any year is limited to the fees that registrant paid in that year.

**Law.** These terms are governed by the law of India; the courts at Hyderabad, Telangana, have jurisdiction.

## 6. Fees

**Now.** Until Smart Scholars is accredited as a Registration Agency, the DOIs it registers for its clients are registered at Crossref through the client's own Crossref membership or a Crossref sponsor, and the client pays Crossref's published fees and Smart Scholars' service fee under the services agreement. The registry holds those DOIs and their records at no charge to the client.

**On accreditation.** A fee schedule for DOIs registered by the registry itself takes effect on accreditation and is published on the policies page at least 90 days before it applies. Its principles are fixed now:

- a **registration fee per DOI**, one for current works and a lower one for works published more than two years earlier (backfiles);
- **no fee** for updating a record, correcting it, changing its address, withdrawing or restoring a DOI, or transferring a prefix — a DOI's upkeep must never cost its registrant anything, so that nothing discourages keeping records right;
- an **annual registrant fee** set by the size of the registrant, with the smallest size free of it;
- a **test prefix free of charge**;
- the same schedule for every registrant, published in full, with no fee that is not on it.

Fees are in Indian rupees for registrants in India and in US dollars elsewhere, invoiced yearly for the annual fee and monthly for registrations, payable within 30 days.

## 7. Complaints and contact

Anything about a DOI, a record, a policy or the registry's conduct: mou@smartscholars.in, answered within two working days. A complaint the registry does not resolve within 30 days may be put to the DOI Foundation once Smart Scholars is a Registration Agency, under the Foundation's own procedures.

## Changes from version 1.0

- **Section 2, metadata.** The DOI System Metadata: every record read against the elements of the DOI Handbook's model and ISO 26324:2025 (Annex B) and the basic metadata its kind of work needs (the registry's specification, version 1.0); shown on every record now; **required for a new DOI from 1 January 2027** — the one new duty in this version, with 90 days' notice. The issuing Registration Agency and the issue date named in every public record, decided by the prefix. The address must be on the public web (a clarification of the 1.0 check that an address answers).
- **Section 3, persistence.** Resolution: through the Handle System at doi.org, and the registry's own Handle service at hdl.smartscholars.in kept in step with every change of address.
- **Section 4, privacy.** The anonymous counting of visits by Smart Scholars' own analytics server (no cookies, no network address kept); the Handle service holds no personal data.
- **Section 5, registrant terms.** The registry's duty to keep its keys secret and to replace one the same day if it has been seen elsewhere.

Nothing else changes: the naming policy, withdrawal, retraction, continuity, the terms, the fees and the contact stand as in version 1.0.

*Smart Scholars, Hyderabad. Version 1.1, in force from 2 October 2026; the DOI System Metadata requirement of section 2 from 1 January 2027.*