[R-pkg-devel] DOI in Description (possibly) invalid

[Ivan Krylov]

On Sun, 8 May 2022 08:01:16 +0000
Murray Efford <murray.efford using otago.ac.nz> wrote:

> This results in checks reporting "Found the following (possibly)
> invalid DOIs:... Service unavailable".

This happens because there's Cloudflare sitting between the world and
Wiley Online Library, and Cloudflare replies with the HTTP error code
503 to requests it doesn't like. When checking DOIs for validity, R CMD
check doesn't bother pretending to be a human operating a browser (it's
hard and keeps getting harder), so Cloudflare classifies this request
as automated and possibly malicious and refuses to serve it. On the
other hand, when you follow the link manually with a browser,
Cloudflare knows you're a human because it's been keeping track of your
browsing patterns across other websites under Cloudflare protection,
and they match typical human behaviour, so you get the content.

It's a known problem. For now, you just have to mention it in the
submission comment.

There has been a suggestion to change the DOI check so that it would
stop after one request to the https://doi.org/ server (which doesn't
discriminate against such automated requests for now) and doesn't try
to follow the link returned by doi.org (which might). Perhaps it would
get implemented when this problem gets worse.

-- 
Best regards,
Ivan