PreSol-10 Memo for Record_Sole Source_CrossRef.pdf

MEMO FOR RECORD

Sole Source Determination

89243122PSC000203 – CrossRef DOI Registration Services

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) plans to contract by means other than full and open competition. This Justification for Other than Full and Open Competition (JOFOC) establishes the justification and approval for the use of one of the exceptions to full and open competition allowed by 41 U.S.C. 3304 as promulgated by Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 6.302, FAR 13.501, and 15 U.S.C.

637(m) as promulgated by FAR 19.1506.

The proposed action is for CrossRef Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) registration services. The period of coverage is January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2022. The total estimated cost of one‐year of DOI registrations is $15,000.00. OSTI plans to award a firm‐fixed service contract to Publishers International Linking Association, Inc.

(PILA)/Crossref. CrossRef bills quarterly in arrears for all DOIs assigned. The DOIs are priced per type of content registration (e.g., technical report, working papers, conference papers, and grant papers.)

Crossref allows OSTI to send metadata and persistent identifiers associated with various technical reports and working papers to be registered with Crossref and assigned a DOI. A DOI is a widely adapted identifier system that provides alpha‐numeric identifiers that can be turned into a URL, which ensure a persistent location and actionable identifier for the online document. These DOIs allow citations to be shared between research produced by different organizations (without the need for individual agreements between them). The identifiers provide a consistent and often widely adopted way to identify and cite information, whether it be titles (ISBN, ISSN), articles

(DOIs, PMIDs) or authors (ORCID). Persistent identifiers are enduring references to a resource such as a web page, file, image, or other (usually digital) object. Crossref uses the DOI to provide persistence for metadata records.

There is a need for OSTI’s technical reports and working papers to have persistent identifiers that publishers will accept to put in journal bibliographies when a technical report is cited, and to allow crawlers and citation indexes to create bibliometrics on how important each document was in the field. DOIs are overseen by the International

DOI® Foundation (IDF). One must use a registration service offered by a DOI Registration Agency (RA) to obtain a

DOI. CrossRef will allow OSTI to send metadata and persistent identifiers associated with both legacy public technical reports and all new public technical reports to be registered with CrossRef and assigned a DOI. CrossRef uses the DOI to provide persistence for metadata records. These DOIs must present a persistent and actionable identifier for documents posted online. A substitute linking system is not acceptable, because a DOI link is a persistent link. Unlike a URL, DOIs are published as a reliable and persistent link in citations and database records.

Crossref is the only vendor accredited by DOI to provide this service. Other vendors listed on the IDF's website specialize in providing persistent identifiers for other data sources. For example, DataCite provides persistent identifiers for data sets. Other accredited organizations provide persistent identifiers for documents that are published in non‐English languages or are published by or in the European Union. Although mEDRA provides a similar service, its pricelist indicates that it provides this service by providing Crossref's service as an "add‐on" to its own service. Thus, an award to mEDRA would not be cost‐effective because it would create duplicate costs.

The estimated total contract amount is $15,000.00. The applicable NAICS Code is 519130 ‐ Internet Publishing and Broadcasting and Web Search Portals.

In accordance with FAR Part 6.302‐l(b) (1) (i) ‐ "unique supplies or services available from only one source or only one supplier with unique capabilities" ‐ it is determined to be in the best interest of the Government to award a purchase order to Publishers International Linking Association, Inc. (PILA)/Crossref.

Mary C. Halterman, Contracting Officer Date