As we finish celebrating our 25th anniversary, we can look back on a truly transformational year, defined by the successful delivery of several long-planned, foundational projects—as well as updates to our teams, services, and fees—that position Crossref for success over the next quarter century as essential open scholarly infrastructure. In our update at the end of 2024, we highlighted that we had restructured our leadership team and paused some projects. The changes made in 2024 positioned us for a year of getting things done in 2025. We launched cross-functional programs, modernised our systems, strengthened connections with our growing global community, and streamlined a bunch of technical and business operations while continuing to grow our staff, members, content, relationships, and community connections.
Crossref turned twenty-five this year, and our 2025 Annual Meeting became more than a celebration—it was a shared moment to reflect on how far open scholarly infrastructure has come and where we, as a community, are heading next.
Over two days in October, hundreds of participants joined online and in local satellite meetings in Madrid, Nairobi, Medan, Bogotá, Washington D.C., and London––a reminder that our community spans the globe. The meetings offered updates, community highlights, and a look at what’s ahead for our shared metadata network––including plans to connect funders, platforms, and AI tools across the global research ecosystem.
In my latest conversations with research funders, I talked with Hannah Hope, Open Research Lead at Wellcome, and Melissa Harrison, Team Leader of Literature Services at Europe PMC. Wellcome and Europe PMC are working together to realise the potential of funding metadata and the Crossref Grant Linking System for, among other things, programmatic grantee reporting. In this blog, we explore how this partnership works and how the Crossref Grant Linking System is supporting Wellcome in realising their Open Science vision.
In January 2026, our new annual membership fee tier takes effect. The new tier is US$200 for member organisations that operate on publishing revenue or expenses (whichever is higher) of up to US$1,000 annually. We announced the Board’s decision, making it possible in July, and––as you can infer from Amanda’s latest blog––this is the first such change to the annual membership fee tiers in close to 20 years!
The new fee tier resulted from the consultation process and fees review undertaken as part of the Resourcing Crossref for Future Sustainability program, carried out with the help of our Membership and Fees Committee (made up of representatives from member organisations and community partners). The program is ongoing, and the new fee tier, intended to make Crossref membership more accessible, is one of the first changes it helped us determine.
22 June 2021, London, UK and Boston, MA, USA — The future of global open access publishing received a boost today with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Crossref. The MOU formalizes an already strong partnership between the two organisations and furthers their shared pursuit of an open scholarly communications ecosystem that is inclusive of emerging publishing communities.
Both organisations aim to encourage the dissemination and use of scholarly research using open infrastructure, online technologies, regional and international networks, and community partners - all supporting local institutional capacity and sustainability around the world.
“DOAJ is delighted to be formalizing today’s agreement with Crossref, an organisation we are already closely aligned with. Together we stand a greater chance of encouraging an open, fair, and fully inclusive future for scholarly publishing,” said Lars Bjørnshauge, DOAJ Founder and Managing Director.
The agreement will enable content from journals indexed on DOAJ to be more easily identified through the use of Crossref metadata. The MOU also covers the exchange of a variety of services and information and greater coordination of technical and strategic requirements between DOAJ and Crossref. Included too is the development of outreach and training materials, coordination of service and feature development, as well as research studies to explore the overlaps and gaps in the journals and metadata covered by each organisation.
“As academic-led journals continue to grow in number and geographic reach, it’s important we support this community more effectively. Our partnership with DOAJ means we can share strategies, data, and resources in order to lower barriers for emerging publishers around the world,” said Ginny Hendricks, Crossref’s Director of Member & Community Outreach.
About DOAJ
DOAJ is a community curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer reviewed journals. DOAJ deploys more than one hundred carefully selected volunteers from among the community of library and other academic disciplines to assist in the curation of open access journals. This independent database contains over 15,000 peer-reviewed open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities. DOAJ is financially supported worldwide by libraries, publishers and other like-minded organisations. DOAJ services (including the evaluation of journals) are free for all, and all data provided by DOAJ are harvestable via OAI/PMH and the API. See doaj.org for more information.
About Crossref
Crossref makes research objects easy to find, cite, link, assess, and reuse. We’re a not-for-profit membership organisation that exists to make scholarly communications better. We rally the community; tag and share metadata; run an open infrastructure; play with technology; and make tools and services—all to help put research in context. Visit crossref.org for further information.
