THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR QUOTE (RFQ) AND NO SOLICITATION IS AVAILABLE. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) intends to issue a firm-fixed award to a single source under the authority of FAR 6.302-1(a)(2)(i)(ii), Only One Responsible Source and No Other Supplies or Services will Satisfy Agency Requirements, to Publishers International Linking Association, Inc. (PILA)/Crossref. This is a notice of intent to sole source to procure Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) through CrossRef (registered as Publishers International Linking Association, Inc.). The U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) located at Oak Ridge, TN, has a requirement to procure services for registration of DOIs for OSTI’s technical reports and other non-commercially published documents. Crossref membership 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. 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 Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to provide persistence for metadata records. 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. There is a need for OSTI’s technical reports 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 service offered by a DOI Registration Agency (RA) to obtain a DOI. A CrossRef membership 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 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this requirement is 519130 - Internet Publishing and Broadcasting and Web Search Portals. This notice of intent is not a request for proposals or quotes. Any questions regarding this notice must be submitted in writing via e-mail to the point of contact or alternate point of contact. Any vendor who believes it can meet the requirement as stated herein may submit a response, which will be considered only if received by Thursday, Dec. 30, 2021, NLT 1:00 p.m. EST. Responses to this posting must be in writing and submitted to
[email protected] by 1:00 p.m. EST. A determination not to compete the proposed order based upon the responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the government. Please note that any prospective offeror must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) at www.sam.gov prior to award in accordance with FAR part 4.11. Contracting Office Address: U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information P.O. Box 62 Oak Ridge, TN 37830 Government Point of Contact: Tammy Payne Phone: (865) 576-0247 Fax: (865) 576-3589 Email:
[email protected]