Release notes

What changed, and when

Every release of the Smart Scholars sites and the DOI Registry, newest first, in plain words. Dates are India time.

What is planned next is on the roadmap. Roadmap · Get the news by e-mail

1 October 2026

Trust pages, the status page, and the registry's governance

The privacy notice rewritten from what the sites actually do: every cookie in a table, what each tool keeps and for how long, payments, signatures and ORCID.
A campaign cookie is now kept only if you say yes: a visit from one of our own tagged links asks first, in one line under the top strip.
An internet address noted to count free uses, posts or failed sign-ins is kept for no more than a day, and wherever a count allows it, only as a one-way code.
New pages: Terms of service, Cancellation & refunds, How services are delivered, Status, Questions and answers, Accessibility, Logo and brand, Roadmap, E-mail updates, and these release notes.
The DOI Registry: Governance, Documentation (with first steps for programs and the schema library) and Become a registrant.
Forms name each box for screen readers, and the rows of cards can be scrolled from the keyboard.
Smart Scholars on Mastodon (@smartscholars@mastodon.social), with our pages credited to it when they are shared there.

1 October 2026

The DOI Registry shows the DOI System Metadata on every record — the elements the DOI Handbook and ISO 26324:2025 give every DOI name — with the published specification of what each kind of work needs.
Every Kernel Metadata Declaration is checked against the DOI Foundation's own schema.
The registry's policies, version 1.1, in force from 2 October 2026; the quality-assurance procedure, version 1.1, published.
The registry's own Handle server, hdl.smartscholars.in, holds every registered DOI and is watched with the sites.
Smart Scholars is a member of ALPSP, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers — shown on every site, with a link to the listing.

30 September 2026

The DOI Registry's policies, version 1.0: naming, metadata, persistence and withdrawal, privacy, registrant terms and fees.
A complete, open copy of every DOI, record and change, written every night and kept off the web host.
One work, one DOI: a second name for a work already registered is refused, and the existing DOI named.
Every registered address read every week, gently; an address that stops answering is shown to its registrant with the day it first failed.
The registrant's handbook: a DOI in five steps, on one page.
Every site sends the browser security headers, and visits are counted by our own analytics server, without cookies.
The Journal Trust Rating asks a slow register once more before it says a source did not answer, and finds a journal's own website from its DOAJ record.
A DOI registration is followed through: to Crossref's verdict, to doi.org, and into the registry.
Every public page is checked around the clock from two servers, each watching the other.
Sign-in pages slow down repeated wrong passwords, and the audit reads only public web addresses.

29 September 2026

The DOI Registry at registry.smartscholars.in: every DOI we register, with its record, where it resolves, and a permanent history of every change.
Open metadata: search across every record, change feeds in Atom and RSS, the whole registry as JSON Lines or CSV, and citations in four formats — also by asking the resolver for a format.

These notes begin with the release of 29 September 2026.