XeroWP
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DOI Creator

0/5 (0 ratings) 30 active installs Updated Sep 21, 2026
DataCiteDigital Object Identifierdoijournalorcid
Download v1.1.0

DOI Creator registers a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) on DataCite for each content you publish, and stores it in the doi custom field of the content, so that your theme can show it.

Features

  • Automatic registration when a content is published, scheduled contents included. It can be turned off, to register DOIs only on request.
  • Any content type: posts, pages and custom post types.
  • Your DOI format: prefix plus a suffix pattern with placeholders ({year}, {month}, {issue}, {volume}, {counter}, {post_id}, {random}), with a live preview.
  • Rich metadata: resource type (journal article, preprint, report…), authors from Co-Authors Plus (guest authors included) with ORCID iD and affiliation (with ROR ID), journal title, ISSN, volume and issue, publication date, abstract from the excerpt, language (Polylang supported), subjects from tags or categories, Creative Commons license.
  • Preview: see the exact request DataCite would receive for any content, before registering anything.
  • Test mode with the DataCite test environment, and a connection test that checks credentials and prefix.
  • Content list: DOI column, filter by DOI status (with DOI, without DOI, failed) and a “Register DOI” bulk action, also for contents published before.
  • DOI box in the editor: see the DOI, register it now or update its metadata on DataCite.
  • Reliable: temporary errors (network, DataCite unavailable) are retried automatically; every registration, update and error is listed in the activity log.

The DOI

Each DOI is made of the DOI prefix set in the settings (optionally followed by a fixed part of the suffix) and of a suffix built from a pattern. The default pattern, {year}-{issue}-{counter}, gives DOIs such as 10.5438/0012/2021-1-2: the year, the issue number (from the periodicity of the journal) and a progressive number.

The metadata

With the “Enhanced” metadata profile DataCite receives: title, authors (with ORCID iD and affiliation when set in their profile), publisher, publication year and date, resource type, a description with journal, issue and year, and, when enabled, abstract, language, subjects, license and journal (title, ISSN, volume, issue).

The “Classic” profile sends exactly the metadata of version 1.0: generic “Text” type ({ "ris": "RPRT", "bibtex": "article", "citeproc": "article-journal", "schemaOrg": "ScholarlyArticle", "resourceTypeGeneral": "Text" }) and a description with journal, issue and year (e.g. “CoolJournal, 3 (2021)”). Sites configured with a version before 1.1 keep this profile until they change it.

Every DOI is registered with DataCite’s technical “source” field set to doi-creator-wp. It is not part of the DOI metadata (it does not appear in citations or in the metadata XML), but it is public: it lets the author of this plugin count, from DataCite’s public API, how many DOIs are registered with it.

Coming soon

Crossref, for journals and publishers that are Crossref members.

Configuration

Open Settings > DOI creator. The Overview shows what is missing. You need:

  • DOI prefix: your DataCite prefix, optionally followed by a fixed part of the suffix (e.g. 10.5438 or 10.5438/0012).
  • DataCite credentials: the repository ID and password of DataCite Fabrica. They are stored in your database and are never shared with anyone other than DataCite.
  • Periodicity: how often an issue is published, used for the {issue} number.

Then use “Test connection” to check that the credentials can register DOIs with your prefix.

Testing

Before registering real DOIs, we strongly recommend to check that everything works in test mode: turn on “Use the DataCite test environment” in the Connection section.

DOIs registered in test mode are visible only on DataCite Fabrica Test and never resolve on doi.org. If your test credentials are different from your production credentials, enter them in the test credentials.

Privacy

This plugin only communicates with DataCite (api.datacite.org, or api.test.datacite.org in test mode), using your DataCite credentials, to check and register DOIs. It does not send any data to the plugin author or to any other service. See the DataCite privacy policy.

Supporting the project

If you find this plugin useful and you would like to contribute to its development, please consider donating.

Feature requests and support

If you would like to see new features added to the plugin, send us your requests through the support forum of the plugin on WordPress.org, and please consider donating to increase the time we can spend coding the plugin.

The plugin is provided as-is without any support. If you really need help, please consider donating and making a support request. We’ll do our best to help those who help us.