OAI-PMH

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The Archives of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (APPS) supports Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) for interoperability, enabling indexing services, repositories, and libraries to automatically harvest metadata records from the journal.

Primary reference: OAI-PMH endpoint information is made available through OJS/PKP platform configuration for APPS.

1) What is OAI-PMH?

OAI-PMH is a standard protocol developed by the Open Archives Initiative that allows automated harvesting of metadata records from scholarly publishing platforms. Through OAI-PMH, APPS exposes article-level metadata in machine-readable formats such as Dublin Core, enabling services like Google Scholar, BASE, and institutional repositories to index the journal’s content effectively.

2) OAI-PMH Endpoint for APPS

APPS is hosted on the OJS platform, which natively provides an OAI-PMH endpoint. The endpoint for APPS is:

Endpoint URL: https://www.pharmacyscijournal.com/index.php/apps/oai

Replace apps with the actual journal path if different.

This endpoint can be used with standard OAI verbs such as ?verb=Identify, ?verb=ListRecords, and ?verb=ListMetadataFormats.

3) Metadata Formats Provided

Through the OAI-PMH endpoint, APPS exposes metadata in common schemas:

  • Dublin Core (oai_dc) — mandatory minimal format used by most harvesters.
  • MARCXML — library catalog format (if enabled).
  • PKP Dublin Core — extended metadata schema specific to OJS.
  • Crossref XML — via Crossref deposit for DOI registration (separate, but interoperable).

4) Who Uses OAI-PMH Metadata?

Several aggregators, discovery services, and institutional systems rely on OAI-PMH to collect metadata:

  • Institutional repositories (DSpace, EPrints, Invenio).
  • Global harvesters like BASE, CORE, and OpenAIRE.
  • Library catalogs and indexing systems.
  • Funders and compliance-monitoring platforms.

5) Benefits for Authors

OAI-PMH ensures that author metadata is transmitted automatically to discovery services, improving article visibility, citations, and compliance with open-access mandates. Authors benefit from:

  • Increased discoverability in academic search engines.
  • Automatic repository ingestion (if linked to harvesters).
  • Enhanced compliance with funder mandates requiring repository deposit.

6) OJS/PKP Implementation Notes

  • Menu slug: /oai-pmh
  • OJS Settings: Ensure “Enable OAI” is checked under Settings → Distribution.
  • Testing: Validate endpoint with OAI Validator.
  • Metadata quality: Require authors to provide ORCID iDs, DOIs in references, and funder info for richer metadata.
  • Repository integrations: Register endpoint with major harvesters (BASE, CORE, OpenAIRE).

7) Contact

For technical assistance with OAI-PMH or metadata harvesting, contact: