How to upload articles to DOAJ: manual entry, XML, CSV and API

Updated: October 28, 2026

Your journal is in DOAJ — now its articles need to be there too. DOAJ does not harvest them: the publisher uploads the metadata of every article. Here are all the options, the data requirements, and the mistakes that lead to duplicates or rejected uploads.

Before you start

The journal must be in DOAJ, and you must be logged in to the publisher account it belongs to. You cannot upload articles for someone else’s journal.
Article ISSNs must match the journal record. DOAJ requires the number of ISSNs in the article metadata to match the journal record: if the journal has both a print and an online ISSN, send both.
Every article needs a full-text link. This field is mandatory: the article page or PDF on the journal website.

Option 1. Manual entry on the DOAJ website

The publisher dashboard has a form for adding an article. It suits a handful of articles: each one has to be filled in completely, including all authors.

Option 2. XML file

The most common way to upload a whole issue. DOAJ accepts three formats:

DOAJ Native XML — DOAJ’s own format;
Crossref XML 4.4.2 and Crossref XML 5.3.1 — if you register DOIs with Crossref, the same file works for DOAJ.

If your journal runs on OJS, a plugin can export DOAJ XML that you can upload straight away. A hand-made file is worth validating against the DOAJ XML schema before upload.

Required DOAJ XML elements: journal title, at least one ISSN, publication date, article title and full-text URL. Everything else — authors, ORCID, affiliations, abstract, keywords, DOI, volume, issue, pages — is optional, but without it the DOAJ record is incomplete and harder to discover.

Option 3. DOAJ API

Use the API when a program uploads the articles: the journal website, an editorial system or a script. API keys are issued to publishers; you will find yours in your DOAJ account settings. With the API you can:

create, update and delete articles one at a time;
upload batches of articles (bulk) and check the upload status.

DOAJ rate-limits requests to 2 per second, with bursts of up to 5. For bulk uploads DOAJ recommends batches of about 600 KB to stay clear of the processing timeout.

Option 4. CSV or Excel via the API

DOAJ itself has no Excel upload, but you can build one on top of the API. In DOAJ Metadata Studio you fill in a spreadsheet template, the app validates every row and sends the articles to DOAJ in 600 KB batches. Details: Bulk upload articles to DOAJ from Excel and CSV.

Upload a single article through a form that checks ISSN, ORCID and DOI — or a whole issue from Excel.

Open the article editor

How DOAJ detects duplicates

This is the key thing to know before re-uploading. If you upload an article with the same DOI or the same full-text URL as an article already in your account, DOAJ treats it as a duplicate and overwrites the old record with the new data. The web form, XML and the API all work this way.

The trap: articles without DOIs and a website move. If an article has no DOI, DOAJ recognises it only by its full-text URL. Move the journal to a new domain and re-upload the back catalogue, and DOAJ ends up with two copies of every such article: one with the old link and one with the new. We saw this on a real journal — almost three hundred duplicates from a single upload.

Before re-uploading a back catalogue, check the journal for duplicates on the “Export & audit” tab.

Common errors

Problem	What to do
Article rejected because of ISSN	Use the ISSNs exactly as in the journal’s DOAJ record, and the same number of them: both if the journal has two.
No full-text link	Add a link of type `fulltext` to the article page or PDF.
More than six keywords	DOAJ keeps only the first 6 — pick the most important ones.
ORCID as a bare number	Use the full URL: `https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097`.
Typos in names, DOIs, links	DOAJ does not check metadata quality on ingest — that is the publisher’s responsibility. You will have to fix errors yourself later.

How to check the result

After uploading, open the “Export & audit” tab, enter the journal ISSN and look at the summary: how many articles lack a DOI, abstract, keywords or ORCID, and whether there are duplicates. Reconciling against a DOI list shows which articles never made it to DOAJ.

See what an audit of a real journal looks like.

Run the example audit