Notice of Intent to Sole Source - Publishers International Linking Association, Inc.

1. This is a notice of intent to sole source for a requirement to procure Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) through CrossRef (registered as Publishers International Linking Association, Inc.). 2. The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) located at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, has a requirement to procure services for registration of DOIs for DTIC's technical reports and other non-commercially published documents. 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 DTIC'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. 3. A CrossRef membership will allow DTIC 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. 4. 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. 5. 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. 6. Interested vendors who believe they can provide this service (or believe that WHS-AD is incorrect regarding any of the statements above) are invited to email Enrique C. Jograj, Jr. at [email protected] and Douglas J. Boorstein at [email protected] NLT 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, 14 May 2018.