JavaScript as Your Assistant: How to Populate Batch Spreadsheets FAST using CrossRef API

Abstract

Have you ever felt that Excel spreadsheets and OpenRefine are not helpful anymore? Your metadata cleaning project is so messy, so complicated, and there isn’t a single tool out there to help you? Maybe what you really need is not a better tool, but something that is programmed to act like you? My presentation shares instructions and insights about how to program with Google Apps Script, CrossRef API, and OpenAlex API, so that Google Spreadsheets fills out on its own, if you provide DOIs. You don’t need programming knowledge, but access to Google Spreadsheet is necessary in order to use the source code I will share. At Denison, we archive faculty papers in Denison Digital Commons. To populate this collection, we use Google Spreadsheet with Google Apps Script that fetches metadata from CrossRef API. The custom source code in Google Apps Script finds a faculty paper if the paper has a DOI number. Then it fills out the spreadsheet. Here’s a quick demonstration that shows how the spreadsheet works: https://www.loom.com/share/71e4556f265145d0b3ac77337f2f38c1. CrossRef API and Open Alex API do similar things, but the data they offer and the way they offer are slightly different. We will also look at the differences and similarities, pros and cons between them.