The Journal of Community Medicine and Health Sciences (JCMHS) supports the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) — an internationally recognized standard that enables the structured sharing of bibliographic metadata across repositories, libraries, and indexing databases. This interoperability framework ensures that all articles published in JCMHS are discoverable through global scholarly networks and open-access repositories.

OAI-PMH Base URL: https://www.communitymedjournal.com/index.php/jcmhs/oai Metadata in Dublin Core and MARC21 formats is openly available for harvesting by compliant repositories.

What Is OAI-PMH?

OAI-PMH, developed by the Open Archives Initiative, is a low-barrier mechanism that allows repositories to expose structured metadata for harvesting by external services. It facilitates interoperability between institutional repositories, journal platforms, and search engines, thereby enhancing the visibility and accessibility of scholarly outputs.

How JCMHS Implements OAI-PMH

JCMHS operates on the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform, which natively supports OAI-PMH. Through this feature, metadata about all published articles—including title, authorship, abstract, keywords, DOI, and license—can be harvested automatically by aggregators and indexing services.

This ensures that JCMHS content remains interoperable with global metadata networks and compliant with open-access infrastructure initiatives.

Available Metadata Formats

The JCMHS OAI interface provides metadata in multiple industry-standard formats for maximum compatibility:

Dublin Core (oai_dc): Standard schema used by DOAJ, CrossRef, and institutional repositories.
MARC21: Compatible with library systems and cataloging tools.
MODS: Metadata Object Description Schema for advanced bibliographic description.
JATS (NLM DTD): Journal Article Tag Suite for biomedical and scientific publishing metadata.

Supported OAI-PMH Verbs

The JCMHS OAI-PMH endpoint supports all six standard protocol requests (“verbs”):

Verb	Function	Example Request
Identify	Retrieves repository information and policy metadata.	`?verb=Identify`
ListMetadataFormats	Lists all available metadata schemas supported by the journal.	`?verb=ListMetadataFormats`
ListSets	Displays defined sets or collections within the repository.	`?verb=ListSets`
ListIdentifiers	Retrieves unique identifiers for all records in the archive.	`?verb=ListIdentifiers&metadataPrefix=oai_dc`
ListRecords	Returns full metadata for all items within a set or time frame.	`?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc`
GetRecord	Retrieves metadata for a specific record by identifier.	`?verb=GetRecord&identifier=oai:jcmhs/123&metadataPrefix=oai_dc`

Benefits of OAI-PMH Integration

Facilitates automatic metadata harvesting by major indexing databases (e.g., DOAJ, Scilit, Dimensions, BASE, and OCLC WorldCat).
Ensures long-term preservation and interoperability across platforms.
Enhances search-engine visibility and accessibility of published content.
Supports institutional repository inclusion and funding compliance (Plan S, Horizon Europe).
Contributes to metadata standardization and quality control for academic archives.

Compliance and Interoperability Standards

JCMHS ensures full compliance with interoperability and metadata-sharing frameworks, including:

Metadata Elements Exposed via OAI

The following core elements are provided for every published article:

Identifier: DOI and OAI-specific unique ID
Title: Full article title
Creator: Author names and affiliations
Subject: Keywords and classification
Description: Abstract and summary
Publisher: Peertechz Publications Pvt. Ltd.
Date: Publication date and online availability
Type: Article type (e.g., research, review, case study)
Format: PDF and XML versions
Language: English (en)
Rights: CC BY 4.0 license link
Source: Journal metadata and ISSN

Harvesting Examples

Harvesters and developers can use the following sample queries to interact with JCMHS’s OAI endpoint:

Identify the repository:
https://www.communitymedjournal.com/index.php/jcmhs/oai?verb=Identify
Retrieve all records in Dublin Core format:
https://www.communitymedjournal.com/index.php/jcmhs/oai?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc
Retrieve a single article’s metadata:
https://www.communitymedjournal.com/index.php/jcmhs/oai?verb=GetRecord&identifier=oai:jcmhs/article/2025-001&metadataPrefix=oai_dc

Integration with Repositories and Databases

The JCMHS OAI-PMH service enables metadata sharing and inclusion in major repositories and academic infrastructures such as:

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
OpenAIRE and Europe PMC
Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar
Dimensions and CrossRef Metadata Portal
Institutional repositories using DSpace, EPrints, or Fedora Commons
BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)
OAIster (OCLC WorldCat Aggregator)

Interoperability with Open Science Frameworks

OAI-PMH integration supports global open-science initiatives by enabling:

Seamless metadata exchange for open-access repositories.
Research transparency through metadata-linked datasets and ORCID IDs.
Compliance with funder requirements for discoverability and reuse.
Aggregation of article-level metrics and citations.
Machine readability for AI-based meta-analyses and knowledge graphs.

Technical Specifications

Software Platform: Open Journal Systems (OJS) 3.x
Metadata Schema: OAI Dublin Core and JATS XML
Encoding: UTF-8 (Unicode)
Output Formats: XML and JSON-LD
Harvesting Interval: 24 hours (auto-synchronization)
Validation: OAI-PMH Validator & Repository Explorer certified

Developer and Librarian Guidance

Librarians, repository managers, and developers interested in harvesting JCMHS metadata can freely integrate using the base URL provided above. The repository is open, requiring no authentication or API key. Batch metadata requests are supported within standard OAI-PMH limits.

Persistent Identifiers and Metadata Linkage

Each record harvested via OAI-PMH includes persistent identifiers for interoperability:

DOI (Digital Object Identifier): CrossRef-registered for citation tracking.
ORCID: for author identification and research attribution.
ROR: for institutional affiliation linkage.
CrossMark: for content updates and corrections.

Ethical and Legal Compliance

All metadata distributed via OAI-PMH are covered under the journal’s Copyright and Licensing Policy (CC BY 4.0). Harvesters must provide attribution to the original source and refrain from modifying metadata in a misleading way. The journal complies with GDPR and COPE privacy principles in exposing metadata.

Troubleshooting and Support

For technical queries regarding OAI-PMH configuration, metadata harvesting, or interoperability issues, please contact:

Email: [email protected]
Subject Line: “OAI-PMH Metadata Harvesting Support”
Response Time: within 3–5 business days

OAI-PMH Validation and Certification

The JCMHS OAI endpoint has been validated through the OAI-PMH Validator and is compliant with the Open Archives 2.0 protocol. Regular audits ensure metadata consistency and version integrity.

Repository Registration

To facilitate visibility, JCMHS’s OAI repository is registered with international metadata registries such as:

Policy on Metadata Use

Metadata harvested from JCMHS may be reused, redistributed, and integrated into external databases, provided proper attribution to the journal is maintained. The metadata itself is distributed under CC0 (Public Domain Dedication) to facilitate unrestricted reuse for academic and non-commercial purposes.

“Interoperability drives accessibility. Through OAI-PMH, JCMHS connects community medicine research to the global digital knowledge ecosystem.”