An open-source ecosystem for implementing free persistent identifiers in open journal systems

Pérez Vera Y. · SoftwareX (2026) · DOI: 10.1016/j.softx.2026.103023

Resumen

Persistent identifiers are essential for ensuring long-term accessibility, interoperability, and reliable citation of scholarly publications. However, many institutional and diamond open-access journals that use Open Journal Systems (OJS) face technical and economic barriers to adopting conventional identifier infrastructures that rely on external registration agencies. This paper presents an open-source software ecosystem that extends OJS with modular support for ARK and PURL persistent identifiers through three interoperable plugins. The proposed architecture separates identifier generation from identifier resolution by introducing an independent Resolver Gateway Plugin, enabling extensibility, maintainability, and deployment without modifying the OJS core. The software was validated through reproducible deployment experiments, functional verification, compatibility assessment, and runtime performance evaluation in a representative institutional publishing environment. Experimental results demonstrated correct identifier generation and resolution across all supported publication objects, successful integration with the native OJS plugin framework, and execution times below 32 ms for all evaluated operations. The ecosystem has been adopted by 42 scientific journals and is publicly available as open-source software, providing a practical and reproducible alternative for implementing persistent identifier services in OJS. The proposed ecosystem contributes a modular, extensible, and freely deployable software infrastructure that complements existing DOI-based publishing workflows.

Instituciones: Universidad La Salle