The OpenAIRE Graph has recently integrated mEDRA’s DOI metadata, adding 1.5M+ DOI-identified records and strengthening persistent identifier coverage across Europe, with a major increase in Italian scholarly content. For OpenAIRE users, this translates into enhanced result coverage and more reliable linking accessible via our APIs, data snapshots and portals.

What’s new

The OpenAIRE Graph has integrated DOI metadata from mEDRA, the DOI Registration Agency run by the Italian Publishers Association (AIE). mEDRA maps its metadata according to OpenAIRE Guidelines 4.0 and exposes records via SFTP, making it the first DOI registration agency to be compliant with the guidelines.

At a glance

• New records: 1.5M+ DOI-identified entries from mEDRA
• Coverage: diverse research products beyond journal articles, assigned with DOI from 2003 to today
• Interoperability milestone: first DOI Registration Agency compliant with OpenAIRE Guidelines 4.0

Explore the dataset

The integration adds a diverse range of research products beyond journal articles. While journal articles represent most of the mEDRA content added to the Graph (around 1.1M records), it also includes substantial volumes of:

• Book chapters / parts of books: ~131k
• Books: ~46k
• Conference objects: ~37k
• Plus smaller volumes of preprints (~6.8k), reports, reviews, and theses, among others.

The graphics below provide a quick snapshot of the integration, showing how production evolves over time (2000–2025), how records are distributed across research product types, and the funders and projects accounting for these outputs.

Why this matters

DOIs are essential for reliably connecting research outputs, metadata, and services. By integrating mEDRA DOI metadata, the OpenAIRE Graph strengthens persistent identifier (PID) coverage and improves cross-entity linking (outputs, projects, funders, and organisations), making the scholarly record more complete, better connected, and easier to use for discovery and monitoring via OpenAIRE portals, APIs, and data snapshots. This integration also expands coverage of DOI-identified outputs from medium and smaller publishers, and benefits from the richness of metadata collected through mEDRA’s alignment with the OpenAIRE Guidelines.

"We are very proud of this integration with the OpenAIRE Graph. For us at mEDRA, being interoperable with OpanAIRE means more than increasing the visibility of the research outputs that have been assigned with a mEDRA DOI over the years. Our mission, as part of the Italian Publishers Association, is to help publishers and researchers in unlocking the potentials of their outputs, overcoming technical, size, and territory barriers thus contributing to a truly diverse and FAIR research ecosystem. In this way, we can make things easy for everyone. Special thanks go to the OpenAIRE team for their guidance, support and patience! We hope our integration can inspire other PID agencies and we are available to share our experience."

"The result achieved demonstrates AIE's commitment to supporting publishing companies - Italian and beyond - by providing them with adequate and up-to-date technological tools. This is fully in line with the longstanding mission of our association: the widest possible dissemination of ideas and research outputs, in full compliance with copyright regulations."

The integration of mEDRA DOI metadata strengthens DOI coverage in the OpenAIRE Graph and improves cross-entity linking, enabling more robust discovery and monitoring across OpenAIRE services.

We warmly thank mEDRA for the collaboration and shared commitment to interoperability, and we look forward to working with additional PID agencies and scholarly data sources to further enhance coverage and link quality across the OpenAIRE Graph.