User talk:OAbot

As discussed above, the easiest way to handle links for DOIs where the full text status isn't super clear is to "hardcode" a suitable link target, be it open or closed, and mark its status appropriately. While the discussion about the doi-access parameter is ongoing, we could already get started on using url-access more. To avoid adding it unnecessarily where there is an OA link, and to avoid unlinking DOIs where a previously open PDF was already archived, it would be best to also add Internet Archive Scholar and other OA links at the same time. Citation bot has already been adding OA links to the url parameter for years now.

A semi-manual example shows the kind of edit I'd like to see. I could open a new bot approval request soon but I'm open to ideas. Nemo 06:55, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

See , etc... Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:27, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

More , . Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:17, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

See discussion above: these are all either correct edits or temporary errors which will be reversed in short order. In more detail:

• I've already reported the AAS journals to Unpaywall, they'll probably be fixed in a few days (as already happened with JBC). Don't hesitate to open a support ticket with Unpaywall to report specific journals whose entire archives are bronze OA. If you know the ABS people you could also suggest that they follow standards for repositories, so their PDFs are less hidden.
• The Wiley etc. DOIs are authwalled via Atypon; there's no way of knowing who's able to access the full text there. They might come back once these authentication requirements are relaxed or worked around.
• The Medknow DOI is broken, why does Citation bot re-add it? Reported there.
• Why do you care about the Royal Society DOI? It's already linked to an archived copy.
• The AME DOI leads to an interstitial before people can download a PDF. A direct link to the PDF is more helpful, one can use the archived copy as well for extra safety and to prevent the citation from going unavailable as happened with Medknow. Most of the journal has been previously preserved (probably when it was still accessible). It does look like a bug though, as Unpaywall considers it bronze. Will look into it, thanks for reporting.

Nemo 11:36, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

All these DOIs are freely accessible, and they should accordingly be flagged as free. That the Medknow one is broken is irrelevant and a seperate issue than its freeness, because you can report it and then it'll get fixed.

Concerning "there's no way of knowing who's able to access the full text there" yes there is. Everyone is able to access those. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:59, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Broken DOIs usually stay broken. Also, if the DOI goes nowhere you can't know whether the full text is available. It's better to re-add any doi-access information after the DOI becomes stable again.

And no, I appreciate your confidence in your testing capabilities but you are not everybody. Even if you have personally tested every single DOI for thousands of journals, that doesn't tell us that everyone else will be served the same result by the publishers, which use algorithmic decision-making to restrict access. Or if you just meant Annual Reviews, yes that's being handled; it's a moving target but will soon get easier as the S20 conversion completes. Nemo 12:53, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

"I appreciate your confidence in your testing capabilities but you are not everybody"

This is all public information. If OABots keeps removing valid free access flags, it will need to be blocked until it no longer does so. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:02, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I've stopped the bot now. What do you mean by "this"? Nemo 13:26, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

That those DOI prefixes are all 100% open access DOIs. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:52, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

No it's not public information, where did you get it? Nemo 15:42, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Pick any of them. Medknow is an open access publisher. BioMed Central is an open access publisher. American Astronomical Society is an open access publisher. Athabasca University Press is an open access publisher. They all are. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:48, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Which DOI prefix are you talking about? If you mean 10.4103, those DOIs belong to dozens of publishers including Springer, Elsevier, Thieme, de Gruyter, Wiley, SAGE and others, which are definitely not fully OA. So again, please be clear about what "public information" you're talking about. CrossRef certainly is not it, so I assume you're using some unofficial source, which is ok, but please clarify. Nemo 16:00, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I've linked the list many times now. 10.4103 are Medknow DOIs. Whatever location they point to now is irrelevant, because those started as Medknow DOIs and were published under open access licenses and that doesn't retroactively change whenever a journal is sold. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:26, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

The list made by you is not a source. You've still not stated how you verified that the DOIs with a 10.4103 prefix are OA. In reality, only 80 % of those DOIs are held by Medknow (the publisher now owned by LWW/WK), and there are over 30 publishers involved. Also, the supposed original OA status is no guarantee of anything because there is no free license, so those publishers can and do make those articles closed OA again. (Less than 1 % of those DOIs carry a free license and less than 10 % carry any license at all, according to CrossRef.) So once again, please state what kind of data verification procedure you've conducted that makes you more confident of your OA status determination than a process that involves actually checking the DOIs one by one. Nemo 22:13, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

100% of these DOIS are free and were owned by Medknow (the 10.4103 ones). No exceptions. Zero. I'm not going to keep talking to a wall that's not interested in being convinced and who wants to ignore reality. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:01, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Have you ever clicked of any of those DOIs? I suspect not, because reality is very different from how you picture it. Some 30 % don't go anywhere and some 10 % go to a 404 or similar. Will you check examples if I provide them, or is your 100 % certainty too strong to ever be pierced by facts? Nemo 07:41, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

That Medknow was shit in updating CrossRef upon transfer does not change the fact that those are Medknow DOIs, or that they are free DOIs. Brokenness changes nothing. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:43, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I think Headbomb is right. https://doi.org/10.4103 it's Medknow.

Most free content licenses are irrevocable. RudolfoMD (talk) 09:54, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

So when Nemo's bot notices that content that was previously made available for free by the publisher, and is no longer available by the publisher, does/can the bot check if has been stored/cached by an archive service, and only if it hasn't been stored by any archive service, then mark it as free? (And otherwise -that is if it is archived, but Wikipedia doesn't link to the archive, add a link to it?) Nemo, do you want the bot do do that? Do you feel you need support (that you don't currently have) from the community to have it do that? Certainly seems wrong to have the bot deleting free tags from content that is available for free from archive services that legitimately archived it - and OA bronze seems to clearly fall into this category. Am I understanding/describing the situation correctly? RudolfoMD (talk) 03:02, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

This bot needs to be shut down until it is fixed. It continues making heaps of incorrect edits, and the maintainer continually refuses to acknowledge the problem or act responsibly to fix it. Here are more examples I have reverted (nearly every example of OAbot edits I have checked from recent days was incorrect): 1188110729, 1188116446, 1188094221, 1188096255, 1188021066, 1188006733, 1187978981, 1187944816, 1187450391, 1187377185. For completeness, this edit seems to be correct: special:diff/1187552735. –jacobolus (t) 20:53, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

As written above, the bot had already stopped removing doi-access=true before your message. The removals which actually were incorrect are being gradually reversed. I've also added some more information on Wikipedia:OABOT#Why did the bot remove a doi-access parameter?. Nemo 22:19, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Please do not start removing doi-access again until there's some community consensus that the bot is functioning correctly. –jacobolus (t) 22:25, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Actually, let me word this strongly: You need to demonstrate that you understand your bot's problems, take clear responsibility for your bot's malfunctioning and show how you intend to fix it (manually if necessary), and provide some assurance that it won't ever happen again. The cavalier attitude you are taking toward a bot which is making mistakes on such a large scale seems frankly unacceptable for bot operators. –jacobolus (t) 00:07, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm taking all this heat from you because I went out of my way to make the bot reverse some of its previous edits that people complained about. It took way longer than I had hoped for (the bot wasn't editing at all for many weeks) but all/most errors you reported back in August are in the process of being fixed this week, AFAICT. Nemo 08:01, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

No, you're taking heat from me because your bot malfunctions and when people complain you don't respond in such a way that gives the impression that you understand the problem, care, or intend to fix it. If you are currently fixing some problem, then you'll avoid "taking heat" by explaining clearly what fix you are doing, and showing what other steps you're taking to make sure it doesn't happen again.

It's not "going out of your way" to fix errors that your bot caused; that's an expected part of running a bot, arguably the single most basic responsibility of any bot operator. Instead, everyone else here is "going our of our way" to pay attention to your bot, repeatedly explain what it's doing wrong, ask for the bot to stop, etc., even though none of us want to be doing that and it's otherwise a waste of our time. –jacobolus (t) 20:06, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Anyway though, thanks for trying to "reverse some of its previous edits that people complained about". I'm hoping that this "some" means all errors of the same general type are going to be fixed? Is there some explanation for what went wrong in the bot's data source / code / heuristics for it to wrongly consider this broad class of papers to be closed, when it is immediately obvious to any human who visits these DOIs that the papers are accessible? –jacobolus (t) 20:17, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

While we're at it, the bot's edit summaries and user page are dramatically insufficient. "Open access bot: doi updated in citation with #oabot." is not specific enough as an edit summary. Instead the bot should say something like, "Open access bot: removed doi-access=free from a non-open-access source, see XYZ linked page for details" with the link pointing at somewhere explaining the bot's decisionmaking process. On the page user:OAbot, there should be a full list of all of the things the bot routinely does, with a detailed explanation and a link showing where each separate type of action was authorized. –jacobolus (t) 22:14, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

The details of the operations are on Wikipedia:OABOT which is linked from the userpage. Nemo 22:14, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Nothing like "Open access bot: removed doi-access=free from a non-open-access source, see XYZ linked page for details" is on that page. Not even in part. RudolfoMD (talk) 09:55, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

E.g. , , ,

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:16, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Ah sorry, that was supposed to be only for manual testing, fixing now. The last edit wasn't wrong though, the link had been taken over by malware. I'm not sure what https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN14173715 is: doi:10.1186/isrctn14173715 is supposed to be a dataset. Nemo 21:20, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I manually fixed the remaining broken link to PIA. The bot should be running correctly now. Nemo 22:07, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Also manually removed some subscription only tags added to Ilse Hagedorn page. Andreiflorea993 (talk) 11:14, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Diff link:

Citation in question:

• {{cite journal|last1=Dawwrueng|first1=Pattarawich|last2=Tan|first2=Ming Kai|last3=Artchawakom|first3=Taksin|last4=Waengsothorn|first4=Surachit|title=Species checklist of Orthoptera (Insecta) from Sakaerat Environmental Research Station, Thailand (Southeast Asia)|journal=Zootaxa|date=2017|volume=4306|issue=3|page=307|doi=10.11646/zootaxa.4306.3.1|doi-access=free}}
• Dawwrueng, Pattarawich; Tan, Ming Kai; Artchawakom, Taksin; Waengsothorn, Surachit (2017). "Species checklist of Orthoptera (Insecta) from Sakaerat Environmental Research Station, Thailand (Southeast Asia)". Zootaxa. 4306 (3): 307. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.4306.3.1.

I'm not sure if there's a more effective way to report bugs but hopefully whatever caused this won't happen again. Umimmak (talk) 23:52, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. I've reported this DOI and journal to Unpaywall (you can also do the same yourself for other cases, if you want to help).

As discussed above, there is one possible fix: to stop adding doi-access=free for bronze OA works (gratis OA without a Creative Commons license). These are the works where detection is most unreliable and which often change status. However there are two factions of users battling in this user page, some asking more doi-access=free and some less, and so far nobody engaged with this proposal, so we just keep going back and forth depending on which kind of edit is more common in any given week. Nemo 07:39, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

This edit should have had a better edit summary - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paracetamol&diff=prev&oldid=1187943393 - explaining that the removed free tags were incorrect. Can the bot not do better at that with little work? RudolfoMD (talk) 08:14, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Another issue is that 1 of the 3 papers is still open access. –jacobolus (t) 20:12, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Oh? I commented above at User talk:OAbot#Removes doi-access=free when the dois are free. I may or may not grok the big picture. RudolfoMD (talk) 05:18, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

The book Introduzione a Catullo by Paolo Fedeli in the Myrtia journal has a free HDL access but does not have an HDL value. First, Second, and third edits. Achmad Rachmani (talk) 06:41, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm afraid we don't support that way of adding comments yet. Is there a specific reason to reject the hdl identifier? Ah I see, there's a mismatch. The reason is that the DOI was wrong, should be ok now. Nemo 18:42, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

It’s not that the DOI was wrong, per se, it’s that that journal only had one DOI — for the journal as a whole — as opposed to unique DOIs for each article. Is it still not worth including? Umimmak (talk) 17:31, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

In this edit, the bot added a link to a 2005 conference proceedings claiming it to be a free version of this 1966 book review. Title, names of authors, number of authors, and journal are all completely different. I assume this is an error propagated from somewhere else. Did this pass the bot's sanity checks? —Kusma (talk) 15:53, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The source of the error appears to be https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.263.7400 , which according to Unpaywall comes with the incorrect doi:10.2307/2004316 despite being about a 2004 paper. It looks like CiteSeerX is undergoing some frontend updates and I can't find anything any more, but there's a "report error" button which might do something useful. Nemo 18:31, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

So does OABot believe in anything CiteSeerX says no matter whether it looks completely implausible? The entry you linked to is so thoroughly messed up that I am not sure it is even possible to correct it (and I don't have the correct bibliographic data anyway). —Kusma (talk) 20:57, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

No, we don't use CiteSeerX as a source directly, there's some more information on Wikipedia:OABOT. Unpaywall usually uses various signals to verify that a match is correct. An incorrect DOI match is quite rare. Nemo 21:09, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The bot did it again, so I assume the band-aid fix linked to from phab isn't live yet? —Kusma (talk) 09:39, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

In Special:Diff/1193833171, OAbot added a PMC that points to a brief announcement of a result in PNAS, to a reference to the full publication of the same result in a different journal. That sort of edit is incorrect and bad. It's the sort of thing that leads to mangled citations as the error is then built on with more bot edits that treat the erroneous id as definitive and replace more of the citation with garbage. Do not do that. If the journals do not match, regardless of similarities in authorship and title, do not add metadata. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:53, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

More OAbot-mangled citations: Special:Diff/1193818981 (same reference), Special:Diff/1193815125 (same problem with an unrelated reference), Special:Diff/1193584598 (same problem with a third unrelated reference). —David Eppstein (talk) 23:58, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The bot has also been edit-warring to reinstate this bad edit three times at Blumberg theorem. It can be locked out of this article but does it need to be blocked to prevent more widespread damage? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for reporting. The first diff seems unrelated, probably one missing digit. I was already looking into it and thanks to your kind explanations in Talk:Blumberg theorem and here I should be able to apply a workaround by today.

I've checked these title matches before, and unless something dramatically changed recently these should be pretty rare errors. They've happened multiple times here because of the unusual coincidence where PMC has scans of two journals which had articles with identical author, year and title but different content. Nemo 10:34, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The years don't necessarily match, and the titles are not always an exact match. I have shown the errors in a table below, calling the paper whose citation is erroneously added to paper L, and the paper whose PMC ID is erroneously added paper S.

	Paper S	Paper L
Diff 1193833171
Title	Non-Separable and Planar Graphs
Author	Hassler Whitney
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences	Transactions of the American Mathematical Society
Year	1931	1932
DOI	doi:10.1073/pnas.17.2.125	doi:10.1090/S0002-9947-1932-1501641-2
Diff 1193815125
Title	On the Theory of Dynamic Programming	The theory of dynamic programming
Author	Richard Bellman
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences	Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society
Year	1952	1954
DOI	doi:10.1073/pnas.38.8.716	doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1954-09848-8
Diff 1193584598
Title	Dynamical Systems with Two Degrees of Freedom
Author	George D. Birkhoff
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences	Transactions of the American Mathematical Society
Year	1917
DOI	doi:10.1073/pnas.3.4.314	doi:10.1090/S0002-9947-1917-1501070-3
Diff 1193758371 and others
Title	New properties of all real functions
Author	Henry Blumberg
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences	Transactions of the American Mathematical Society
Year	1922
DOI	doi:10.1073/pnas.8.10.283	doi:10.1090/S0002-9947-1922-1501216-9

Dmoews (talk) 16:32, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, all these cases and similar ones should be fixed now. (By ignoring title matches.) Nemo 21:17, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

See also § Wrong PMC link from 2019 and § Wrong PMC link - April 2020. It seems that this insidious garbaging of citations has been going on for a long time and that the weak patches applied to fix specific instances of the problem have not actually fixed the problem. The bot needs to be much more careful about checking these matches than it apparently has been. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:37, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The April 2020 case was unrelated and caused by an incorrect DOI. The 2019 cases were because of our own title matching on Dissemin, which is not used by the bot now. Back then were fixed by making the title matches more restrictive, in a way that should prevent all the cases above (PMC title matching multiple DOIs): phabricator:T228666. I had plans to revisit those restrictions at some point, will keep this in mind: phabricator:T228702.

Generally speaking, I agree it would be bad to have "weak patches applied to fix specific instances of the problem". I tend to avoid exceptions for specific papers or journals in OAbot, though sometimes I contribute exceptions to Unpaywall. We try to maintain fixes for specific occurrences in the form of units tests to avoid regressions. Nemo 21:17, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Woodlark_Basin&diff=1193931371&oldid=1179325953

The hdl generated by the bot which has suddenly got active with new functionality is not recognised being 20.500.12210/63872

The doi still works: 10.1038/s43247-022-00387-9

Suggest hdl functionality be disabled for time being for anything identified by a doi as this is unnecessary duplication as doi is a subset of hdl.

There could be some clean up to do ! Does bot need to be disabled/blocked yet again ChaseKiwi (talk) 00:52, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Actually it's the opposite: every DOI is also a handle, but not vice versa. You can resolve a DOI like https://hdl.handle.net/10.1038/s43247-022-00387-9 but we don't generally put DOIs in the hdl parameter.

Thank you for reporting, I'll inform the repository admins. Usually, handle resolution failures like this are temporary issues with specific repositories. You can also add a direct link to the intended target which is https://hal.science/hal-03611693v1/document . Nemo 10:48, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Another incorrect hdl link: Special:Diff/1195808135. The reference goes to a journal paper but the hdl goes to a Ph.D. dissertation. (They have the same name and author but that is not a good enough match to make this decision.) —David Eppstein (talk) 18:29, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Article: Giant pangolin
Referenced page:

https://doi.org/10.1111%2Faje.13279

(automatic redirection) → https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aje.13279

(after clicking 'Read the full text') → https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/aje.13279

Bot's edit: Special:Diff/1228253952
Reverted: Special:Diff/1228447858
Re-insertion: Special:Diff/1229502557

But the access is not free – as I stated in the revert action, doi-access=free not true, the full text available through registration or purchase. --CiaPan (talk) 11:37, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Special:Diff/950835738 added incorrect doi-access=free to "Restricted access" sources. 2600:4041:35E:4A00:AC48:659B:3743:6105 (talk) 06:05, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

(cannot find image) Thanks for citing! Have a nice day 14.102.171.218 (talk) 17:09, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Last edit was almost a month ago on september 18 2024. So9q (talk) 08:10, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

See RFC, which could impact this bot. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:30, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I see the outcome was positive. I'll try to instruct to the bot to remove those PubMed URLs, as I see there are still some lingering. Nemo 21:34, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

OCLC links too. Those are a bit trickier, but they will at least always be safe to replace. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:03, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

In this edit, the bot added a link to a conference presentation (slides and video) that presumably led to the journal paper being referenced, but is obviously not the the paper itself. How can I stop it doing that? Kanguole 08:12, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Generally speaking, by reporting the issue to Unpaywall. See https://unpaywall.org/faq . Nemo 21:47, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Is there any way to block this bot from a citation or article? Kanguole 22:05, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes. See User:OAbot#Scope. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:33, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Example edit: special:diff/1291493520

Perhaps most importantly, such edits, if done site wide, are going to be super disruptive and annoying to page watchers for no particular benefit to readers. Often Google Books links are set to go directly to the passage being cited, which is often (but not always) enough to verify the claim made in the article.

But also, Google Books access that doesn't show the whole book is a "preview" (how much preview depends on the book) and "subscription" is not an accurate description, since there is no way to subscribe. –jacobolus (t) 17:51, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Indeed the easier solution is to remove such links which provide no value because the ISBN link already does the job. Only page links are somewhat recommended. Whether readers are going to be provided a preview is unpredictable, see also Wikipedia:Google Books and Wikipedia. Nemo 06:57, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

It's an exaggeration to say they provide "no value"; they have a search bar allowing readers to search within the book and typically show several pages of preview. The page you linked is an essay describing the opinion of a few Wikipedians, not a policy. (Also the ISBN link takes several steps of indirection to get anywhere and is extremely confusing for new readers to navigate.) But also, I don't think bots should be trying to enforce anything like this site-wide. If you want to, as a human, remove such links manually on a case-by-case basis and subject to local discussion and consensus, knock yourself out. –jacobolus (t) 07:11, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Similarly, a lot of these |url-access=subscription edits are triggered by |url= containing the URL already generated by |jstor=. This setting adds no value at all. The best fix for these is to remove the |url= parameter, since |jstor= is assumed to require a subscription unless |jstor-access= is specified. Kanguole 23:22, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

Indeed the JSTOR URLs are redundant and should be removed, to avoid confusion. I encourage you to do so. Unfortunately the bot can't do it. Nemo 12:52, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

In Special:Diff/1291510702, the bot added url-access = subscription for a 1928 citation whose url goes to a link on eudml.org ("currently down for maintenance" but this is just a short-term outage) that provides the full text, open access, with no subscription required nor even possible. Please stop the bot from repeating these bad edits. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:34, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Another completely bogus subscription-required: Special:Diff/1291513751. Does the bot need to be shut down until the cause of this spate of bad edits is identified and fixed? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:55, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Yet another: Special:Diff/1291516527. This one is a little different in that the magazine in which the reference appears is generally subscription access, but this specific article is not. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:57, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, I stopped the bot. How to best fix those edits? I suggest removing the redundant URLs (out of 3, 1 was open and 2 were closed). Nemo 19:24, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

On that last diff, it was only the CACM reference that I was complaining about. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:20, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes. It was the only one which warranted (and was missing) a |doi-access=free. Nemo 06:49, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Sure, but the bot added a different and wrong url-access. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:26, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Another bogus subscription-required: Special:Diff/1292265721. Kanguole 09:13, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. I've filed T395086 for such cases. Nemo 12:52, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Still adding false claims of url-access=subscription for eudml links: Special:Diff/1292335643. Make it stop. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:07, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Sorry for that. I've removed the remaining eudml citations from the queue (there were about 10) and will work on a more permanent fix before the next run. Nemo 06:13, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

In this recent edit, the OAbot added "url-access=subscription" to several citations. For some, like Davison (2019), the free preview offers the full first page and the notes, which is enough to verify the article content. How does the bot decide when to add the red lock? I suspect a lot of these will have at least the abstract and/or first page available without a subscription. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 14:43, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

As explained in Wikipedia:OAbot#What_repositories_is_the_bot_querying_and_pulling_from?, the data comes from Unpaywall. The meaning of the parameter is explained at Help:Citation Style 1#Access indicators for url-holding parameters: they're about the source as such, i.e. the full text; an abstract is not the same as the source. Nemo 14:52, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Ah, okay, perhaps I am mistaking the point of the icon. In a situation where only a portion of the cited source is needed to verify the article content and that portion is freely available at the URL, but the rest of the source is behind a paywall: the expected behavior for the bot and template is to show the lock icon? If so, just disregard my original post above, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 21:29, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes the icon is about the work, not about the claim you're making about it. If you've only used the abstract, you could in theory just cite the abstract as source, but I'm not sure we have a template for that. If you did, I would probably mark that sentence with a {{citation needed}} because the abstract does not support that claim. Nemo 07:09, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

Bot is marking url access=subscription articles available on Austlii: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parliament%20of%20Australia&diff=1292050504&oldid=1291754341 e.g. Safes007 (talk) 00:08, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Bot is also adding "access=subscription" parameters to articles freely available on the Dictionary of Irish Biography (dib.ie). See: diff and others. The dib.ie website is not paywalled or subscription-walled. So something has gone wrong here... Guliolopez (talk) 11:14, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. In both cases, the open access version was probably not detected due to the lack of a PDF file. The case of doi:10.3318/dib.009196.v1 can be fixed by removing the redundant URL and is already fixed upstream. I'll report the case of doi:10.22145/flr.36.1.4 to Unpaywall. Nemo 12:52, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, this one was also free. You can just click on the pdf button on equinox. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:59, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

So does this one . This specific run seems to have a concerningly high incorrect rate. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:01, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

With the first I could just change the DOI tag to free, but the reporting is still incorrect. Can't fix the second one. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:07, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. doi:10.1558/firn.18372 has already been fixed upstream. I've reported the case of doi:10.2307/1191205. I'm currently clearing a backlog of the bot to facilitate testing of the Unpaywall updates, so I can start bigger changes this weekend. Nemo 06:13, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Also doing it to free sources hosted on issuu.com, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fort_Buenaventura&diff=1292570181&oldid=1273492238 Beneathtimp (talk) 22:38, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Here is another example, special:diff/1292641425 with link https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pitzer_fac_pub/118/

@Nemo_bis can you please stop the bot from making this type of edit until this can be sorted out? Making a large number of incorrect edits like this is more disruptive than whatever benefit we get from a little symbol after the URL in cases where it was correct. –jacobolus (t) 02:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, I've reported doi:10.2307/2689807 to Unpaywall as a false negative (it used to be found back in 2019 and the repository seems ok). I've also removed from the queue all suggested edits to citations mentioning scholarship.claremont.edu (there was only one) or issuu.com (there were a dozen). Issuu is not a suitable archive so please make sure to archive a copy of such documents e.g. at the Internet Archive (the 1953 volume is missing at pub_utah-historical-quarterly).

The current run of the bot is nearly done. It will be possible to make larger changes to the code afterwards. (I'm not sure how difficult it will be, as it depends on how much the data changed in the new version of Unpaywall. The current data has been tested for over a year so it's safer to use.) Nemo 05:25, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

Here is another: 7, the original article is from here. Radlrb33 (talk) 17:25, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

I've also {{bibcode}}, {{doi}}, {{hdl}}, {{jstor}}, {{osti}}, and {{ssrn}} to support |identifier-access=free. So if you have a free hdl, you can flag it with {{hdl|1808/3638|hdl-access=free}} → hdl:1808/3638.

For bibcodes, you can tell if a free version is available when you follow the link, e.g. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1927LAstr..41..165F/abstract, and there's an "ADS" option under "full text sources". Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:12, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Ok, good to know even though the bot is not likely to start touching these. I hope citation bot stops removing URLs from the url parameter just because they correspond to an identifier which does not autolink the title. Nemo 06:32, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

"the bot is not likely to start touching these"

Why not? (Same for their equivalent CS1/2 parameters)

Citation bot should only remove redundant urls when there's an autolinking one. Or crap PMID/OCLC links. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:59, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Hi! OAbot is causing havoc in every page where I, or others, have cited this URL which, by the way, is a very relevant article for the topics covered in Anthozoa and many of the articles that relate to Anthozoa and its organisms.

As you can easily see, this particular article/url is open-access, but OAbot adds a wrong "|url-access=subscription" parameter to its {cite journal} template. Unfortunately, the parameter does not permit "free" or "open-access" as a value which, in theory, could prevent OAbot to add a wrong access and make the open access explicit.

Please fix this error in OAbot. PMRonchi (talk) 17:56, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Although the error in OAbot is indeed a problem, there is no good reason to use a url in the citation to that paper. Cite it by its doi instead; this goes to the same place more robustly.

McFadden, Catherine S; Quattrini, Andrea M; Brugler, Mercer R; Cowman, Peter F; Dueñas, Luisa F; Kitahara, Marcelo V; Paz-García, David A; Reimer, James D; Rodríguez, Estefanía (January 2021). Carstens, Bryan (ed.). "Phylogenomics, Origin, and Diversification of Anthozoans (Phylum Cnidaria)". Systematic Biology. 70 (4): 635–647. doi:10.1093/sysbio/syaa103.

—David Eppstein (talk) 19:22, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Oh, I understand where the problems was, now. I'll fix my entries and apply your solution from now on. Thank you.

PMRonchi (talk) 22:47, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

PMRonchi, while you're here, you usually don't need to list an editor for journal papers, and when there are many authors it's also possible to limit the number printed in the citation with the display-authors parameter, if you like:

McFadden, Catherine S.; et al. (2021). "Phylogenomics, Origin, and Diversification of Anthozoans (Phylum Cnidaria)". Systematic Biology. 70 (4): 635–647. doi:10.1093/sysbio/syaa103. PMID 33507310.

How many authors to show in citations is left to discretion of Wikipedians working on each article. –jacobolus (t) 12:10, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

Many thanks for the remarks on the use of "et al." both to David Epstein and to Jacobolus. The fact is that whenever possible, I only put the doi or similar identification code for the publication, and let the WP tool for automatic citations do the rest of the work, when citing. PMRonchi (talk) 00:22, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

This edit at Heroic nudity marks doi:10.3764/aja.111.1.35 with |doi-access=free. Try it; it's not.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:24, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, reported at https://unpaywall.org/fix/ . Nemo 20:25, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

And this one is doi:10.2307/2369491, but the bot removed doi-access=free . Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:54, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes, bronze OA remains hard to track and that's why they're left for manual review. The solution is to add a proper archive copy in the URL, like https://archive.org/download/jstor-2369491/2369491.pdf . Nemo 21:58, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

See Metrosideros bartlettii - OAbot marked some citations as subscription-based, when they're not. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 23:53, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Yep - same on recent edit of Clinopodium douglasii. (I've reverted those edits.) Peter G Werner (talk) 04:09, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting. See Wikipedia:OAbot#What about the url-access parameter?.

As for the first article, which ones are not paywalled? As for doi:10.3732/ajb.1100549, it's a nonfree bronze OA article, so it's hard to tell how long it will be accessible. The easy solution is to remove the URL from the template. Nemo 05:11, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

I had this same issue with two of my articles, My Schizophrenic Life and The Day the Voices Stopped, specifically from the journal Psychiatry Services. Therapyisgood (talk) 23:10, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

As explained in the subject page, you can fix the issue by removing the URL. Nemo 18:05, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

The bot also incorrectly does this for urls to the American Veterinary Medical Association e.g. Traumnovelle (talk) 23:05, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

The bot continues to do this. Traumnovelle (talk) 07:52, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

And the solution remains the same. Nemo 16:32, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

If a bot is making incorrect edits it should be on the operator to resolve it instead of editors. Traumnovelle (talk) 20:22, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes. Nemo, this isn't an isolated incident, it's ongoing (see below). Alexeyevitch^(talk) 23:33, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

I have had to fix this multiple times on multiple pages. If the bot can't handle the existence of a URL, then the bot shouldn't be running on citations that include a URL. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 15:18, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

The bot does handle the presence of an URL. When an URL is being marked as subscription, it generally means that there's some problem with it, such as being redundant or not being as accessible as it might seem on a cursory view (that's also been the case for the URLs reported above). Therefore, it's best to take the nudge and fix the citations to follow the guidelines, which is the whole point anyway. Nemo 12:20, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Hello. The OAbot added in this edit "|url-access=subscription" to a citation of a journal in Persée. However, the journal is freely accessible and downloadable free of charge. Cheers! Aviationwikiflight (talk) 14:30, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:OAbot#What about the url-access parameter?. Nemo 07:25, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Hello. On the page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromia_bungii
OAbot incorrectly marked 2 subscription articles as doi-access FREE. These are
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13355-017-0509-9
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13355-021-00726-w
Bernhard Zelazny (talk) 08:00, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. These have been fixed in Unpaywall later (August 2025). Nemo 07:25, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi Nemo bis, the bot has twice mistakenly tagged the clearly viewable entire cited excerpt here as "subscription" . Could you please make it stop so I do not have to revert it again? RipplingRiver (talk) 00:39, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:OAbot#What about the url-access parameter? explains what to do. Nemo 07:15, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi Nemo, that information doesn't solve the problem or answer the question. The citation itself is a free except . The URL to the free excerpt needs to stay, and is already open-access for anyone to view. The bot should not be marking a url to a FREE EXCERPT as "subscription". RipplingRiver (talk) 22:58, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

You might try to insert the URL of the excerpt-containing webpage as a link in the citation (as I did, see below). Up till now it works. Phacelias (talk) 15:17, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

That is exactly what the bot keeps tagging as subscription, even though it is a FREE, VIEWABLE excerpt and no subscription is required. RipplingRiver (talk) 21:57, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

The {{cite journal}} template is used to cite scholarly works. If you want to cite a mere abstract (an extremely unusual proposition), you need to use another template, and fill in the metadata differently. For example the title should mention that you mean the abstract only, and you'd need to figure out whether the rest of the metadata is still correct (is Taylor actually the author of the abstract? how do you know? the web page only provides information on authorship of the work as a whole). Then there would be the matter of whether a mere abstract is a reliable source; it should probably be qualified in the body text. Nemo 12:15, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Nah, you still use cite journal, just that you put |at=Abstract or |pages=287–295 [Abstract], e.g. Taylor, Frazine K. (2021). "Historic Similarities Between the Green Book and the Underground Railroad". Alabama Review. 74 (4): 287–295 [Abstract]. doi:10.1353/ala.2021.0033.. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:19, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

• To repeat yet again, the link is NOT an abstract, it's an EXCERPT. A lengthy, 685-word excerpt. RipplingRiver (talk) 22:52, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

  Fully agree! I think a bot that adds or corrects open access links is a good faith and potentially useful contribution, but that said OABot is buggy and programmed according to some questionable criteria as to what is and isn't an open-access article, especially its treating certain types of open-access licenses as effectively not open-access based on the licence not being "permanent" enough. I really don't have a lot of time for useless Wikipedia admin board battles - I'd rather be writing articles (including contributing solid references) with my Wikipedia time than engaging in that wheel-spinning - but I do want to chime in that I do see A LOT of issues with OABot, and I'm clearly not the only one. Peter G Werner (talk) 17:30, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Four citations in Ranunculus adoneus were marked with "url-access=subscription". Two of the URL's are free: https://doi.org/10.3732/ajb.92.11.1827 https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-3040.1998.00336.x I will revert these edits and hope the bot will in the future distinguish accessible URL's from inaccessible URL's. Phacelias (talk) 15:13, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:OAbot#What about the url-access parameter?. Nemo 07:25, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't understand the purpose of the |url-access= parameter, but this edit flagged four links to open access pdfs as |url-access=subscription https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donald_E._Francke&diff=prev&oldid=1315371684. I reverted the edit. --Lexiconaut (talk) 17:39, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:OAbot#What about the url-access parameter?. Nemo 12:15, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

1 updated Robert Griess with an open-source arxiv version of "Integral forms in vertex operator algebras which are invariant under finite groups". Journal of Algebra. 365 (3): 184-198, which is fine on its own if it weren't for the fact that the peer-reviewed version of the nearly-exact same document is already linked, and doi freely-accessible. Shouldn't the bot avoid this repetition, as it can confuse readers for which open-lock icon is preferable? The bot on its own does not seem to prefer having a rainbow of locks for each individual citation where possible, per what I have seen. But on Robert Griess it seems to consistently think otherwise (on this example); see 2. What is going on exactly? Thank you in advance for your help on the matter. Radlrb33 (talk) 20:00, 20:40; 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Hello again. Can you please provide with me some details I asked for, regarding to how OAbot continuously targeted one reference alone with the unnecessary ref arXiv'ing, while there exists a doi-freely accessible version? I asked this of you several days ago, and have not heard from you, @Nemo. I may need to pursue other avenues to seek a proper response, as you might be purposefully ignoring the issue at hand (and me). Radlrb33 (talk) 03:02, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

This is the templates being used as intended. The link to arxiv is useful for anyone who doesn't want wish to visit Elsevier's website, for example for fear of being deported. What's the gain in removing the arxiv identifier? If you wish to change the templates so that an arxiv parameter is not used/recommended/displayed in such a case, you could start by raising the matter at Help talk:Citation Style 1. Nemo 11:58, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

They also are a backup unofficial copy for when DOI/Elsevier (in this case) servers are down. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:17, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Then how come this is not more common practice? Why don't we see more dual doi/arxiv additions, from humans? These outages are extremely rare, and last about an hour or two hours on average, about twice or three times a year (outside of regular maintenance). That leads to more confusion, really. But what's strange here is not that the bot did this on its own, it's that it was targeted over and over, even instead of other refs that could have been supplemented with an extra arXiv ref ID. That makes me think, this could have been done purposely (like spamming, edit-warring). Radlrb33 (talk) 15:28, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Pretty sure that there isn't a one-to-one relationship between journal-published articles and arxiv or biorxiv or medrxiv etc preprints. If we are to believe these searches, {{cite journal}} templates that have |doi= and |arxiv= parameters are found in:

~21600 articles where |doi= precedes |arxiv=

~7700 articles where |arxiv= precedes |doi=

While 21600 + 7700 = 29300 isn't a huge number, it certainly indicates that pairs of |doi= and |arxiv= parameters in {{cite journal}} templates isn't uncommon.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:58, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Nice numbers, thank you for those. It still is confusing to not have it be a linear relationship, arXiv should never be first in ref IDs, except for expert-sourcing on papers that are undergoing peer-review, and are maybe expected to pass; or, on findings that can be trusted themselves but haven't gone to peer-review, for whichever reason (author expertise and reliability is one reason). Radlrb33 (talk) 17:31, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh and by the way, these numbers might not be accurate at all: Michael Jackson is listed in your search as being an article were |doi= prevedes |arxiv=, however, on the only citation with an arXiv on that article, it is found before the doi parameter:

Eom, Young-Ho; Shepelyansky, Dima L. (2013). "Highlighting entanglement of cultures via ranking of multilingual Wikipedia articles". PLOS ONE. 8 (10) e74554. arXiv:1306.6259. Bibcode:2013PLoSO...874554E. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0074554. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 3789750. PMID 24098338..

So, I am not necessarily inclined to trust those numbers, I will check more out. Radlrb33 (talk) 17:55, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

I did write: If we are to believe these searches... But, in your example, |doi= does in fact precede |arxiv=:

{{Cite journal |last1=Eom |first1=Young-Ho |last2=Shepelyansky |first2=Dima L. |date=2013 |title=Highlighting entanglement of cultures via ranking of multilingual Wikipedia articles |journal=PLOS ONE |volume=8 |issue=10 |article-number=e74554 |doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0074554 |doi-access=free |issn=1932-6203 |pmc=3789750 |pmid=24098338|arxiv=1306.6259 |bibcode=2013PLoSO...874554E }}

so the search did correctly identify that template.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:07, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh no. That is not what I was asking for, you must have me confused, or misread the issue at hand I mentioned to HEADBOMB. I am asking for the output as it reads on the articles themselves, not the input on code editors put in. Do you understand my question and concern, now? Radlrb33 (talk) 18:10, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

I have always understood what you are complaining about. You wrote: But what's strange here is not that the bot did this on its own, it's that it was targeted over and over, even instead of other refs that could have been supplemented with an extra arXiv ref ID. (you didn't offer examples of ... other refs that could have been supplemented ...) To which I replied: Pretty sure that there isn't a one-to-one relationship between journal-published articles and arxiv ... I added the numbers because it shows that |doi= / |arxiv= pairs in {{cite journal}} templates are not uncommon; nothing more. There are two searches because there is no constraint on the parameter order that editors choose when writing {{cite journal}} templates; any order is acceptable to {{cite journal}}. This makes it necessary to do two searches: one for |doi= first and one for |arxiv= first.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:51, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Correct, you knew what I wanted *and want Radlrb33 (talk) 18:39, 17 October 2025 (UTC)* to know, yet you chose to give me irrelevant information regarding my query. That has a name. Radlrb33 (talk) 19:00, 16 October 2025 (UTC). It is unrelated information that you provided because, while their presence together as identifiers on references on the English Wikipedia is (and was not) in question on its own, what is in question is how and why the choice of inclusion happens as a bot automation versus as a human choice (I stated the issue was regarding peer-review for this example; sometimes you do need arXiv, here it is not evident that you do, it's wasting bytes). Most experienced editors here know, that there would be at least several thousand citations with both arXiv and DOI. Radlrb33 (talk) 20:10, 20:29; 16 October 2025 (UTC)

~ I want to say that those numbers are still nice, for what they are, so thank you, as they contextualize, yet they don't say exactly who did it and which were automated or ran by the administrators of the bots. You are still being, seemingly, dismissive of the true need to talk about this. At this point, it is evident that by the rejection, the talk should be had at a different time and place, as this by-passing sullies the very purpose of a respectable conversation. At least I will tap out from this conversation, communications and postures will speak for themselves, and time will always still remain present for further exchange ; ). Radlrb33 (talk) 18:51, 18:56; 17 October 2025 (UTC)

By the way, aside from the above, I think the only other example that could have been edited with arXiv on Robert Griess is: Griess, Robert L. Jr.; Lam, Ching Hung (2011). "A moonshine path from E8 to the Monster" (PDF). Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra. 215 (5): 927–948. doi:10.1016/.jpaa.2010.07.001. MR 2747229. Zbl 1213.17028., however "Integral forms in vertex operator algebras which are invariant under finite groups" by Griess that I originally mentioned was added by the OAbot five times over (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) without adding an arXiv to the former. There is one more but it already has an arXiv added to it (0 from a bot, as an edit requested by a user). I thought there were more, so I should have mentioned it in the singular. (That's 1:5, not 1:19 for a raw statistical significance of preference, as it's against only one reference.) We'll see the bot behavior moving forward, on this page, and maybe see ideas on arXiv pre/post DOI and other identifiers on referencing. Radlrb33 (talk) 19:30, 19:40; 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Curious, what about OCLC links? I think I remember you saying they are useless. Do you suggest adding OCLC links in tandem with Open Library (OL) links? I.e. congest a citation with both OCLC and OL links? So that, in case either website is down, and we are curious as to find a book in a library nearby, we still are able to, @Headbomb? (Hmm). Radlrb33 (talk) 15:53, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

If you care to respond to my questions I asked you, please do, @Headbomb. If you rather only have a conversation with Nemo, then that is fine too, as that shows there was no true interest here in answering my questions honestly, while also speaking on my points with interest and dedication. Nemo not only asked, "What's the gain in removing the arxiv identifier?" after I had described precisely why, but hasn't truly answered any of my questions yet: who did the changes, himself or the bot? Would be nice to know; and how does it choose when to add an arXiv when there is already a DOI, is it always whenever it finds it? — You have barely answered to one: how this is "standard" yet barely extant in Wikipedia (30,000 accounts of DOI and arXiv is minimal), a 2020-based study in 2021 studied almost 30 million citations from 6.1 million Wikipedia articles and within those *foundRadlrb33 (talk) 14:03, 19 October 2025 (UTC)* only a pocket of 1,442,177 with DOI and 47,601 with arXiv (!). - there is no standard here, on adding arXiv with DOI given these numbers; as Nemo was referring to. The only real use for arXiv is for when DOIs cannot directly be accessed, as a workaround, or for expert papers in peer review; there is such a thing as excess. Maybe, the better place to put an additional arXiv if available (*always*), is going to come from a much more novel method, one that may require a more drastic change (and that would benefit all of citation styling); that would be to have be in the form of a note on the reference that can be expanded possibly, so that all IDs can be placed inside, or the more redundant ones maybe inside such a note, so as to not clutter and confuse readers of the main body of the reference. This is just an idea, but we can converse like that here or wherever, if we decide to; getting picky about it like @Trappist the monk, is only showing of a lack of interest to engage when the opportunity comes, and where it is relevant, as it is here too (edit-warring on Robert Griess, unresponsive bot operator alongside companion frequent commenters/contributors, abusive communications - using words such as "complaining" by Trappist the monk about what I am trying to accomplish here with a valid concern, rather than complaint; he has also effected diversions; etc, this is naturally a space to talk about this, too if this is how the bot is being ran and monitored)).

So, if you decide not to engage either, that is fine to - it is an action nonetheless, though counter to the Wikipedia and Wikimedia goals of building this encyclopedia together (ignoring fellow editors runs counter to the mission). Radlrb33 (talk) 17:09, 18:02; 17 October 2025 (UTC)

As I said, the gain of removing it is to de-congest the linked IDs, so as to not overwhelm readers that are unaccustomed to these, and where one is preferential over the other (one is peer-reviewed, and the other is not). While it is done as initially intended, that does not mean that it is optimal. If I see an arXiv ID, it might make me think, as an unaccustomed reader, that the doi-link might not be preferential or even worthwhile. Weirdly, arXiv IDs come first, rather than last in the long list of ID links to a reference (it would be much wiser to have the DOI appear first, rather than second when in-tandem with an arXiv ID). While it could be beneficial for when there are "outages" as HEADBOMB mentioned, that is a very rare thing, usually very limited in time, and not common practice (to preferably add arXivs when available to publications). Thank you for responding back. You still haven't answered why this particular citation was targeted over others, @Nemo? Was that just statistical improbability? Radlrb33 (talk) 15:47, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Weirdly, arXiv IDs come first Not so weird. Because of how Lua works, a table of identifier label / value pairs is not guaranteed to have any particular order so, for consistency, cs1|2 assembles them into a sequence and then alpha sorts the sequence by identifier label for final rendering. This because editors complained about the random ordering of identifiers in the final renderings.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:58, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

It is not strange to you that the least reliable link is put first (in the case of arXiv), when there is a compendium of ref IDs - on the cases that they are put first Radlrb33 (talk) 17:31, 16 October 2025 (UTC) ? I think readers prefer to visualize the most prominent Identifier first, rather than last or in-between. It is not easy to gauge, but I would say that the most neutral identifiers should come first, those that are just reference locators (DOI, BIBcodes, PMIDs, JSTOR, etc), and then the more particular identifiers (reviews, IDs with citations, etc.) afterward (MR, ZBL, JSTOR if its a review, etc.). Radlrb33 (talk) 17:24, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Your response answers part of my Q here (arXiv/doi first or elsewhere in the list); I hadn't read your response to another comment above. This is not very consistent by the looks of it, though. (Or optimal.) That's however an issue to be resolved another time. Radlrb33 (talk) 17:38, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

As suggested above, if you wish to suggest a different ordering for the rendered named identifier list, propose it at Help talk:Citation Style 1 and see if you can get a consensus for a change.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:51, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes I understood that already. Thanks for being extra explicit. Radlrb33 (talk) 18:04, 16 October 2025 (UTC) Radlrb33 (talk) 18:32, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

So, I mean actually how readers see the reference IDs, not how it is in the code. It still stays very strange, to have arXiv before DOI as reference identifiers, or any such identifiers before the reference locators. Radlrb33 (talk) 18:34, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

That is not a topic for this venue because OAbot has no power to change how cs1|2 template render.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:51, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

It is a question I asked regarding why the bot kept reverting my changes on Robert Griess, yet I received no response for some time until I asked again. It is also relevant because I also want to know, directly, the opinion of the Bot runner on this matter, as it is obviously of import: whether the reader is diverted to a less valuable origin for a source, and therefore trust on the information being relayed. And, while the bot has no power over the order of IDs, it can have power over the choice of IDs, given what's already present. Radlrb33 (talk) 19:03, 1909; 16 October 2025 (UTC)

OAbot incorrectly tagged the |url-access= of this old 1965 ACM conference paper https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1463891.1463956 as subscription, when in fact it is open-access (see ACM link provided): the edit was https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TX-2&oldid=1317798337 . I assume that OAbot isn't fully up to date with the current state of ACM's transition to open access. It's unsatisfactory that free is not currently an accepted value for |url-access=, as that means there's no way of explicitly signalling to bots not to just put the incorrect subscription label back on again. RW Dutton (talk) 12:08, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

OABot has just restored the incorrect url-access=subscription information! https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TX-2&oldid=1318974809 I have reverted it again ( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TX-2&oldid=1319015056 ). I will now have to try to do what is necessary to prevent this from becoming a recurring problem. RW Dutton (talk) 08:29, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:OAbot#What about the url-access parameter?. Just remove the redundant URL. Nemo 10:06, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

In Mani peninsula, re edit 1321394369 of wikitext for citation [12] (Harvati (2019), et al.).

As far as I can see, the hdl target page does not contain or link to the free-to-read article; only the abstract + metadata.

— Protalina (talk) 15:26, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Happened a second time. — Protalina (talk) 08:32, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Again. — Protalina (talk) 07:36, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Again. — Protalina (talk) 07:17, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Again. — Protalina (talk) 07:53, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Again. — Protalina (talk) 08:44, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Hello, thanks for letting us know. As noted in the userpage, if you urgently need the bot to stop making some edit you can use {{bots|deny=OAbot}}.

Have you already tried following Wikipedia:OAbot#How to help the bot avoid mistakes?? Nemo 09:57, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

I've contacted Unpaywall about this.

— Protalina (talk) 13:00, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

Bot marked as subscription open access sources on the article Constitution of Australia Safes007 (talk) 08:01, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Not sure why that one happened. I suggest to try a direct HTTPS link. Nemo 10:03, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Figured it out. The original URL answers with HTTP 410 Gone even though it redirects in a browser. Now that a current URL is used, the error should not repeat. Nemo

Hello. I am afraid that you may have made a mistake on Tobacco industry in Switzerland.

• How do you deal with journals which are subscription at first, but open access after a few years of embargo ?
• Why automatically add the parameter "url-access=subscription", when there is already "doi-access=free" ?

Thanks in advance. Atis Muller (talk) 12:40, 25 December 2025 (UTC).

The same issues regarding several articles cited on Tobacco legislation in Switzerland.

Atis Muller (talk) 20:20, 6 January 2026 (UTC).