• Why are there no DOIs for older papers in Astronomy & Astrophysics

    From Phillip Helbig (undress to reply@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jan 6 05:33:26 2023
    Why are there no DOIs for older papers in the journal Astronomy &
    Astrophysics?

    That is bad enough in itself, but when investigating that problem (which
    I do from time to time, as many other journals now have DOIs for older
    papers), I noticed that the webserver aa.springer.de which hosted older
    papers no longer works. According to aanda.org, older papers should be accessed via ADS (where they had already been for a while anyway). At
    least if nothing fancy is done that is fine; why re-invent the wheel?
    As is now obvious, ADS is more stable than some journal websites.
    (MNRAS has DOIs for older papers and has them accessible via a
    publisher's website, but there are some mistakes in that papers are
    assigned to the wrong issues, i.e. browsing by issue returns a list of
    papers some of which are actually in another issue. Bad enough, but the
    DOIs, which use a sensible scheme containing volume, issue, and first
    page, are based on the wrong classification.)

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  • From Eric Flesch@21:1/5 to Phillip Helbig on Sat Jan 7 10:32:13 2023
    On Fri, 06 Jan 2023 05:33:26 PST, Phillip Helbig wrote:
    ... I noticed that the webserver aa.springer.de which hosted older
    papers no longer works.

    Yes, and as you did, I went to ADS for those papers.

    As is now obvious, ADS is more stable than some journal websites.

    But then we are dependent on a single source...

    there are some mistakes in that papers are
    assigned to the wrong issues ...

    Yes, or wrong year of publication or something else. When that
    happens I have to list them out and find it. But one time even that
    did not work, recently -- one paper would not come up from the ADS
    search boxes. So I located its reference amongst references for
    another work, and when I clicked it, it came right up. I had written
    out that reference exactly correctly into the ADS search boxes, to no
    avail. Sorry I can't remember which paper that was, mid 1990's.

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  • From Phillip Helbig (undress to reply@21:1/5 to Flesch on Sat Jan 7 17:58:25 2023
    In article <63b928c9.186242531@news.aioe.org>, eric@flesch.org (Eric
    Flesch) writes:

    On Fri, 06 Jan 2023 05:33:26 PST, Phillip Helbig wrote:
    ... I noticed that the webserver aa.springer.de which hosted older
    papers no longer works.

    Yes, and as you did, I went to ADS for those papers.

    As is now obvious, ADS is more stable than some journal websites.

    But then we are dependent on a single source...

    I'm pretty sure that ADS has mirror sites. (They certainly did in the
    past. In these days of fast internet connections, I don't bother trying
    to find a closer site (which might not necessarily be faster). It
    appears to be well run. I'm sure that they have backups.

    there are some mistakes in that papers are
    assigned to the wrong issues ...

    When they become aware of a problem, ADS are usually quick to fix it.
    The comment immediately above refers to MNRAS. I've contact them and
    they are looking into it.

    Yes, or wrong year of publication or something else. When that
    happens I have to list them out and find it. But one time even that
    did not work, recently -- one paper would not come up from the ADS
    search boxes. So I located its reference amongst references for
    another work, and when I clicked it, it came right up. I had written
    out that reference exactly correctly into the ADS search boxes, to no
    avail. Sorry I can't remember which paper that was, mid 1990's.

    Note that ADS has several databases, and there are various defaults
    depending on various things. You can set them if you have an account.
    Note also that the modern form and classic forms have different
    defaults. If your defaults don't include, say, the physics database
    (just the astronomy one, for example), then the search might not find
    it, but of course once you have the link you can access it.

    I still use the classic interface for simple stuff. The new interface
    takes some getting used to, but it does offer more functionality. For
    example, one can generate a list of papers (practically, for certain
    journals and/or date ranges) which are not on arXiv. Turns out that
    10--20 per cent of papers from the major astronomy journals are not on
    arXiv, presumably for a variety of reasons (luddites not caring about
    arXiv, people annoyed with their arrogance even though they've had no
    real problems, people who are banned (sometimes for good reasons,
    sometimes not), people who just don't bother anymore because there are
    so many things wrong with the way it is run (I'm in that group; I've
    also removed all links to arXiv (including to my own papers) on my web
    pages).

    I've used ADS quite a bit in the last few years. It is a great
    resource. It's worth learning the new interface---not to replicate what
    you can do with the classic interface, but for the new stuff. The staff
    are helpful and polite. Those not familiar with it should take a day
    off to get up to speed. If you can't figure out how to do something,
    send them an email; they usually have a solution.

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