Risk to Open Access and DOI Reliability: Inaccessible DOI Landing Pages in Some Commercial Repositories

[Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff]

I would like to raise a concern relevant to the sustainability of open access and the long-term reliability of DOI-based scholarly communication.

There are increasing cases where commercial repositories restrict access to previously open scientific works, including materials with assigned DOIs. Authors may lose access to their own publications, while the DOI continues to resolve to an empty, inaccessible, or paywalled landing page.

This situation creates a structural risk for the open-science ecosystem:

• DOI persistence becomes unreliable when landing pages no longer provide access.
• Open access is compromised even when metadata remains publicly available.
• Reproducibility suffers when citations cannot be verified.
• Independent researchers are disproportionately affected.
• FAIR Accessibility and Reusability are violated.

Given OSF’s role in promoting sustainable open science practices and supporting transparent, reproducible research, I would like to suggest initiating a discussion on:

1. How the open-science community should respond when DOI-assigned materials become inaccessible.
2. Whether repository accountability guidelines should be strengthened or clarified.
3. How open infrastructures can protect authors when commercial repositories restrict access to their own work.
4. Potential mechanisms for re-publication or DOI migration in exceptional cases.

This issue is becoming increasingly common and represents a systemic threat to open access and the reliability of persistent identifiers.

Thank you for considering this topic for discussion within the OSF community.