A preprint server owned by a commercial publishing company posted a paper and assigned a DOI to the preprint. The manuscript was then submitted to peer reviewed journal X, owned by a different publisher. Assuming acceptance at the journal, can the article be published under a different DOI belonging to journal X?
At journal X, Crossref registration is automatic. However, can two different DOIs be assigned to the same content. According to their website (https://www.doi.org): "DOI...is related to a single resource. If the URLs or services change over time, eg, the resource moves, this same DOI will continue to resolve to the correct resources or services at their new locations."
Question for the Forum
● Can two DOIs be assigned to the same article?
The Forum noted that if an article is retracted and then replaced (ie, republished as a corrected version), a journal might wish to retain the DOI of the paper. However, the DOI will only reference the retracted article and not the new version. Hence two DOIs are needed for the two different versions of the article. In this case, because one of the articles is a preprint and the other is a new publication, two DOIs are required. The final published version should have been improved by the peer review process and so there can be two DOIs for the original preprint and the published version of record.
A note should be added to the preprint version to state that the article has been published. Also, the author should acknowledge the previous version in the new manuscript as a reference or footnote.