Meetings on Crossref

Building, refining, and connecting: summary of our May 2026 community update

Rosa Morais Clark — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Our 2026 Community Update took place on 13 May. Two calls, one for the eastern and one for the western time zone, highlighted how our global community is growing, how we’re refining the metadata that supports trust in the scholarly record, and connecting records more effectively through our latest tools.

Operations, governance, and a growing membership

Our Chief Operating Officer, Lucy Ofiesh and Executive Director, Ed Pentz, opened each session with an update on operations and governance, starting with the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI). We adopted POSI in 2020. Recently, the Principles were updated by a group of adopters, following a community consultation, and four new principles were added: periodic review of purpose and community value; transparent operations as a distinct principle; refined guidance on financial reserves; and attention to volunteer labour and transition planning. Recordings and slides are also available.

Infrastructure organisations can use POSI to assess themselves and demonstrate to the community how they’re adhering to the principles, which support forkability, long-term sustainability, open assets, and transparent, community-led governance. We published a biannual report on how we measure up against them, so we’ll publish our next self-audit against the new set at the end of 2026.

Financially, we’re in good shape. With so many new members joining every month, our revenue grew 8% last year, while expenses came in 3% under budget, and Content Registration was up 13% year-on-year at the end of March, well above our long-term average of around 7%. We’ve used our operating surplus to build up and maintain a reserve fund of 12-months of operating expenses, which matters for long-term sustainability. We use additional surplus funds beyond our reserves to reinvest in our mission and community.

We had our call for board nominiations in May. Seven seats are up this year, one large and six small, and any member can stand. Voting runs for around five weeks, one vote per member, regardless of size. Last year, just 6% of members voted, and we’d like to see that increase. The call for expressions of interest is now closed for 2026, and candidates will be announced by our Nominating Committee in the coming months in advance of the election and annual meeting, which will be held on 22nd October 2026.

Robbykha Rosalien and Maryna Kovalyova from our membership team then took us through the membership picture. We’re now 25,000 organisational members from 167 countries, with around 51% based in Asia. The majority of our new members are universities, scholar-led publishers, societies, small journal publishers, and government agencies. We have help from 140 sponsoring organisations and 42 ambassadors, and we’re grateful for all the support they offer our members.

The metadata corpus and its use have grown alongside the community

Turning to new members, over 3,000 have joined from 142 countries since the last community update. 54% are from Asia, with Indonesia accounting for 17.5% of the total and India next at 9.5%. We continue to have members joining from the US and the UK, and we also have over 100 new members from Türkiye, with strong growth in Brazil and Pakistan as well.

January 2026 brought a major change with the introduction of a new fee tier for members with annual revenue or expenses (whichever is higher) of under USD 1,000. Since then, 40% of the new members joined under this new tier. 40% of our new members identify themselves as publishers and 40% as universities or scholarly organisations, with plenty of societies (13%), governmental agencies or NGOs (4%), and others, such as hospitals. The most popular publishing platform choice among the new members remains Open Journal Systems by PKP at 55%, with 30% saying they have no platform, and WordPress (4%) and Scholastica (2%) following. Notably, we’re working with PKP this year to help members transition to OJS 3.5, which supports richer metadata.

We also extended our Global Equitable Membership (GEM) program at the start of the year to include 18 additional countries. GEM offers Crossref membership and Content Registration without any fees. Since the last community update, we’ve gained our first members in Haiti, South Sudan, and Niger, and 20% of all independent members who have joined since then are GEM-eligible.

Introducing the Member Practices Working Group

Our Membership Director, Amanda Bartell, introduced our new Member Practices Working Group with a reminder of Crossref’s role in preserving the Integrity of the Scholarly Record (ISR). We’ve always aimed to keep barriers to membership as low as possible, because the best way to support a healthy scholarly ecosystem is to make metadata about published content as open and transparent as possible. That openness lets members demonstrate their practices through metadata, signalling trustworthiness to the scientific community as a whole, and when practices fall short, the metadata itself can surface those issues. Our member terms already make the importance of accurate metadata clear: if the community identifies inaccurate metadata, we can suspend or revoke membership. That is a last resort, and our first approach is always to contact the member, explain the problem, and work with them to get the metadata record corrected.

But what if the reports we receive from the community don’t relate to metadata, and instead to the member’s broader practices? This is an increasing issue, and it has been unclear how and when we should respond.

In consultation with our board, we updated our member terms last year and added an obligation for members to comply with a set of published member practices. The role of the working group is to draft this set of practices and provide clear guidelines on what we expect of Crossref members. In rare situations where issues can’t be resolved, the Member Practices will provide the basis for acting decisively, including suspending or revoking membership.

The Crossref Member Practices Working Group brings together differently sized members from different regions, metadata users, bibliometricians, and scholarly sleuths. Once drafted, we’ll take the Member Practices out for community consultation, with a board vote expected at their November meeting. It’s particularly important to us that the practices are achievable for all types of members, and we don’t want to create any extra barriers to entry or to continue membership for less experienced or less well-resourced members.

To seek feedback from the community on emerging themes, Amanda ran two live polls during the call. One of her questions was: for the records you register with Crossref, are you the journal owner, the nominated publisher, or a bit of both? 45% of respondents said a bit of both, with the journal owner as the next most popular response, and the nominated publisher after that. The second poll asked whether the phrase “nominated publisher” accurately describes what those of you in that role do. The result suggested it is broadly acceptable, though we’d still like to hear how you’d phrase it if not.

Metadata schema

Patricia Feeney and Helena Cousijn from our programs and services team walked us through a year of schema work and what’s coming next. Schema 5.4 was released in March 2025 with three key features: typed citations, version numbers, and preprint status.

Typed citations give members the chance to indicate in the metadata what type of citation it is, so when an article cites a dataset, it’s now possible to explicitly say so. So far 23 DOI prefixes are using typed citations, so adoption is starting, and we’d really like to see it grow. If this is something you think is useful for you, please take a look, or reach out, and we’ll help you get started.

Version numbers, which 25 DOI prefixes now use and mostly for preprints, let you indicate different versions. We’re not yet seeing much use for articles or other record types, which we’d like to encourage. Notably, when you’re registering new versions of the same record, there’s no separate content registration fee, as long as you include the relationship in the metadata.

Preprint status lets you indicate that a preprint has been retracted or withdrawn, for example.

Earlier this year, we added the ability to include grant DOIs in funding metadata. When you register metadata for any research output, you can now include the persistent identifier to indicate which grant funded the work. The number of grants registered as part of the Grant Linking System by our funder members grows (with now over 200,000 grant DOIs in existence). This dedicated new field provides an opportunity for members registering works to unambiguously identify the grants that funded the work. The grant DOI links to a full grant record, including funding type, project information, investigator details, funder and program/schema details, and institutional relationships.

We’re working on Schema 5.5. The main thing we know many of you have been waiting for is support for the CRediT taxonomy and its 14 contributor roles. We’re also enabling multiple roles for a single contributor, and within the Crossref vocabulary, which we still support, it will be possible to specify the corresponding author.

After 5.5 comes the update to our dedicated grant schema. Grant Schema 0.3.0 adds the ability to indicate that a grant was awarded to an institution (via a ROR affiliation ID), reflects that roles can change over time, and adds support for a persistent project identifiers, RAiD – a service that functions as a project identifier to indicate how a grant relates to one or more projects.

We’re also deprecating older schema versions. We’re supporting over 27 at the moment, which is too many and not helpful to members. The fundamental structures need updating, and we also need to tighten some of our requirements to obtain better and more complete metadata. We started the project at the end of last year, and we’ll be saying goodbye to a set of versions at the end of this year. Everyone using those versions has already been contacted, so if this concerns you, you should have heard from us. The project continues over the coming years, and we’ll work on deprecating other Schema 4 versions, so that by the end, we’ll only be supporting the different Schema 5 versions and the upcoming Schema 6. We’ll notify everyone impacted and let you know how to transition.

Once 5.5 and the grant schema are out, we’ll start working on remodelling contributor names, which is a really big project. A proposed model was circulated for feedback in May. The same update will also work on statements, currently for funding, acknowledgments, ethics, accessibility, AI use, data availability, copyright, and conflict of interest.

Tools and demos

Funder matching, rebuilt around ROR

Dominika Tkaczyk and Jason Portenoy from our technology and data science team gave an update on the Metadata Matching work, framed around the vision of the Research Nexus: a rich and open network of relationships connecting organisations, people, outputs, and activities within the scholarly record. First up for the project is funder matching, and Dominika and Jason took us through the new methodology and progress on implementing the work.

Funding metadata involves three main entities: funders, grants, and research outputs. Organisations are identified by Open Funder Registry (OFR) IDs or ROR IDs, and research grants and outputs have DOIs. These entities should be linked in order for provenance and attribution to be determined, which is important for evidence but also for things like research assessment and compliance.

The three entities: Funding and academic organisations→recipients are awarded grants→ repositories and publishers support outputs.

In practice, many of those relationships are missing when metadata is deposited. The new Crossref funder matching identifies the funding organisation from the name in the metadata and, when successful, inserts the correct organisation identifier, disambiguating the relation between the research output and its funder. Applying matching over the years has added around 2.8 million funder identifiers to records, shrinking the gap.

So why rebuild what we already have? Two reasons. We’re committed to supporting ROR more deeply across our services, and as part of that, we want to switch to ROR IDs as the main identifier for funders. Second, our current funder matching is part of our legacy system, which lacks transparency, thorough evaluation, or flexibility.

The new strategy is part of our metadata matching project. The core architecture is built, and the new strategy has been tested; we’re now adding features such as sending redeposits, with more testing later this quarter and a release aimed for around the middle of the year. After that, we’ll move on to a grant-matching workflow to link outputs to grant records where that link is missing.

They closed with a live demo covering four cases. Starting with a simple example of Wellcome, which matched cleanly because the input name matched the official organisation name exactly, they then moved on to more complex examples, showing increasing discrepancies between the input and the name variant in ROR, yet the strategy still resolved it. However, some names are not possible to match in this way, such as the “Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,” which is a very generic name that many organisations might use as part of their structure. That matters too: the strategy recognises when no match should be returned, limiting the level of incorrect information that might be introduced into the metadata.

Data citations API endpoint

Martyn Rittman who heads up our Research Nexus development, and Panos Pandis from our technology team introduced the new data citations API endpoint. It exposes data citations from deposited metadata, with over 700,000 included so far. Among all the reference information we hold, individual data citations are difficult to pick out, and there’s a specific community interest in them, so we’ve put them together and made them available through a dedicated API.

Data citations can be included in two parts of a metadata record: references and relationships. We look for links to datasets registered with a Crossref DOI or a DataCite DOI. Documentation can be found here.

Through March 2026, we typically collected 400 to 600 data citations per day, with some variation, especially on weekends. The new endpoint is still in beta, and we invite feedback: is it useful, what would make it more useful, and what should we do next? Let us know on the forum.

Metadata Manager: new content types coming

Lena Stoll, who heads up our community trends program and Patrick Vale from technology took us through Metadata Manager. We retired the legacy interface at the end of last year and replaced it with a more modern and flexible helper tool for record registration. It’s already in use by an increasing number of members for grants and journal article records.

A recent addition is a search field, where you can enter the DOI of any supported record (currently a journal article or a grant) and edit it directly, if you have permissions. We’ve also added fields to the journal article registration form to include relationship metadata, which is key to building the Research Nexus.

Plenty more is coming. The new Metadata Manager will expand to support books and chapters, conference proceedings, reports, dissertations, and post-publication updates over the next few months. The interfaces follow a similar workflow: a page or two of work-level metadata, optionally chapter, or paper, or series metadata if applicable, a review step, and submission. We want to keep them as simple and usable as possible.

We hope that the post-publication update form will be welcomed by our members, as it will enable registration of retractions, corrections, and expressions of concern without any knowledge of XML. Lena and Patrick walked through a live demo of a retraction notice end-to-end. The system checks that the DOI being retracted exists, and any errors surface right away rather than later by email. We’re collecting feedback on the new tools on the forum.

The team also shared an update for institutions that use DSpace – its next version (version 10), will include a Crossref integration that lets you register Crossref metadata and DOIs automatically for content such as dissertations hosted in your DSpace repository.

Looking ahead

A new Service Providers Program

Madhura Amdekar shared our plans to launch a new version of the Crossref Service Providers Program later this year. Service providers are hosting platforms, manuscript submission systems, XML or metadata providers, and general publisher service organisations that work with our members to create, register, or display metadata on their behalf. They’re key partners in promoting metadata best practices, and we’re looking forward to collaborating with these organisations more closely. The program will not charge any fees; it will offer certification in two tiers, depending on the depth of integration with Crossref services.

We’d really like to hear from you: which service providers in this space would you like to see as part of the new program? Drop suggestions on the forum or get in touch with us directly.

Thanks to our speakers and to everyone who joined, asked questions, and voted in the polls. Recordings and slides are available, and the conversation continues on our community forum.

See you at the next one.

March 2026 board meeting summary

Lucy Ofiesh — Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We’re providing a summary of the board’s March 2026 meeting. At the meeting, the board reviewed progress in our key programs and initiatives, the strategic outlook for 2026, filled a vacancy on the Board, considered an additional legal entity for Crossref, and reviewed our governance structures. The resolutions are available on the dedicated section of our website, which also lists the members of the Board and offers further information about our governance.

Board business

January board minutes

The board voted unanimously to approve the minutes of the January 2026 board meeting.

March board meeting agenda

The board voted unanimously to approve the agenda for the March 2026 meeting. The board then voted to approve the consent agenda, which includes a package of routine board business items.

Vote to appoint a director to a vacated seat

Lisa Schiff of California Digital Library (CDL) stepped down from the board at the end of February, and CDL decided not to name a replacement. The board voted unanimously to take the most recent member election results and appoint Oscar Donde of Pan Africa Science Journal to fill the seat. Oscar will serve out the remaining years on CDL’s term, which is to the end of 2027.

2025 year in review & framing the strategy for 2026

Ed Pentz and Lucy Ofiesh presented a review of 2025, including our financial performance, member participation, and growth of metadata records, connections, and usage. Crossref ended 2025 in a healthy financial position, exceeding revenue by 6% and saving 3% on expenses as compared to the budget. Member participation and statistics on the metadata records are captured in our State of Research Nexus report.

We then turned the discussion to the strategic issues in focus for 2026. Ed discussed the projects in focus for each of the three program groups: Co-creation and Community Trends, Contributing to the Research Nexus, and Open and Sustainable Operations. Details of these programs can be found on the strategic agenda page and public roadmap.

The board discussed the ongoing work of the project known as Resourcing Crossref for Future Sustainability (RCFS). This multi-year effort, which began in 2023, aims to make our fees more accessible, equitable, and simpler to understand and operate. In January 2026, we rolled out a new, lower membership fee, removed little-used discounts that contributed to fee complexity, extended our GEM program to include zero-fee membership and content registration for 18 additional countries, and introduced a two-year fee waiver on back-year grants. In 2026, we are monitoring the effects of these changes and initiating the review of content registration fees.

We provided an update on community investments we’ve made in line with the use-of-surplus funds framework that the board adopted in November 2025. To date, Crossref has committed USD $447,000 to several organisations and initiatives that share our mission.

Establishing an additional legal entity in Europe

The board discussed the decision to broaden our operations by setting up an entity in Europe, specifically an AISBL (International Non-Profit Association) in Belgium. This entity will sit alongside our existing organization and share the same name, mission, and services. They will be connected through a managed agreement. This will help build organisational resiliency, create the capacity for future operations if needed, and reflect the global nature of our membership.

The board discussed the structure of the entities. The entity will be organized so that it may conduct business in the future in a way that maintains equal governance with the primary entity. Concurrently, the team is reviewing storing a back up of the system in the EU for redundancy purposes. A board discussion ensued, followed by a vote.

The board voted unanimously to approve proceeding with establishing a Crossref AISBL to sit alongside the primary entity and serve the goals described above.

Governance review

Periodically, the board conducts a review of the organization’s stakeholder governance. The board discussed the strengths and areas for improvement in the current board structure and options to adjust it in the future. Discussions were preliminary to scope the review and will continue in more detail at the July board meeting.

There being no other business, the meeting was adjourned.

Strengthening community connections in São Paulo

Susan Collins — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Versão em português

As our global community continues to grow, it is important for us to build and maintain our connections within it. In March this year, we had the opportunity to visit São Paulo for a community event at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas. The content of our presentations is available online. Events such as this provide an opportunity for us to update our members on Crossref fundamentals and developments, and help us better tune in to the varied needs of our communities and learn how we can work together more effectively. This was our third visit to Brazil, with previous events held in Campinas and São Paulo in 2016, and Goiânia and Fortaleza in 2018.

Our membership in Latin America has grown steadily in the meantime. We currently work with more than 3,300 members across the region; and the largest number is based in Brazil, with over 1,900 members. The majority of these represent universities, societies, and government organisations, followed by libraries and foundations that also register their works with us. In total, our members in Brazil have contributed over 2 million open metadata records to the Research Nexus.

On March 3, we welcomed 60 attendees, which included members, sponsors, service providers, and researchers. Each of these groups contribute unique perspectives and experiences, and use our services in a variety of ways. We were also joined by four Crossref ambassadors - Pedro López Casique from Mexico, Juan Felipe Vargas, Nicolás Mejía Torres from Colombia, Edilson Damasio from Brazil, as well as colleagues from SciELO Brazil.

Photo: Crossref staff and ambassadors: Leandro Contreras, Pablo López Casique, Nicolás Mejía Torres, Luis Montilla, Susan Collins, Juan Felipe Vargas, Jason Portenoy, and Isaac Farley

We started the day with an emphasis on metadata quality, the role of Crossref DOIs, and content registration best practices. We offered an overview of our helper tools: the updated Metadata Manager for record registration and Participation Reports for reviewing metadata completeness. Pedro, who is also a Publication Support Specialist with Public Knowledge Project (PKP), gave an overview of working with the Open Journals Systems (OJS) platform, which is widely used by our members throughout Brazil.

Photo: PKP’s Pedro López Casique highlighting Brazil as the second highest user of OJS-hosted journals globally.

Later in the day we shifted to more technical topics including metadata retrieval, the use of metadata for discoverability and research integrity, and common metadata errors in the registration process. Roberta Takenaka, systems developer at SciELO, discussed an overview and challenges of the adoption of DOIs in the SciELO network.

This was a tri-lingual event with presentations delivered in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, with live interpretation available for participants and presenters.

Photo: Isaac Farley discussing metadata updates

During the session, we asked attendees to share their feedback on both the value of Crossref to their organisation and the challenges they face when working with us. Participants noted persistence, the commitment to scientific development, metadata standardisation, interoperability, and increasing content visibility as important benefits. The most common challenge reported was language - the majority of our documentation is in English, which makes it difficult for many to fully utilise the available resources. Several mentioned that costs can be a challenge for some organisations, and others noted that more training opportunities, held in Brazilian Portuguese, would be appreciated.

Photo: Participants chatting during the morning coffee break

The question and answer sessions covered a wide range of technical topics, including OJS integrations, interpreting monthly resolution reports, updating metadata in bulk, and implementing Crossmark. During the coffee breaks, discussions continued as participants shared their thoughts, additional questions, and feedback with us.

Following the presentations, we held small group sessions with participants to gather feedback on two ongoing projects. Leandro Contreras, our new UX researcher, met with a group to gather information on how users interact with our website, as part of our website architecture improvement project. Luis Montilla, Technical Community Manager, led a group discussion with editors to learn more about editorial workflows and how they interact with scholarly metadata.

Many of the participants also joined us for our Metadata Sprint, which took place in the days following, exploring the uses of open scholarly metadata in creating new tools and solutions. These events were an opportunity to reconnect with the community, gather feedback to create additional training and support materials, share developments and resources, and strengthen our connections with members and key collaborators. Ana Marlene Freitas de Morais, former vice-president of the Associacao Brasileira de Editores Cientificos do Brasil (ABEC Brasil), our largest Sponsor in Brazil, stressed the importance of face-to-face collaborations, such as this event, for engagement in Brazil. Through our Ambassadors, Sponsors, and other partners, we aim to continue building lasting relationships and supporting our growing community in Brazil.

With special thanks to our hosts at Fundação Getúlio Vargas for the generous use of their venue and support personnel.

Português version

À medida que nossa comunidade global continua a crescer, é importante para nós construir e manter nossos laços dentro dela. Em março deste ano, tivemos a oportunidade de visitar a nossa comunidade em São Paulo num evento na Fundação Getúlio Vargas. O conteúdo das apresentações está disponível online. Eventos como este nos proporcionam uma oportunidade de atualizar nossos membros sobre os fundamentos e desenvolvimentos da Crossref, além de nos ajudar a nos sintonizar melhor com as diversas necessidades de nossas comunidades, e aprender como podemos trabalhar juntos eficazmente. Esta foi a nossa terceira visita ao Brasil, com eventos anteriores realizados em Campinas e São Paulo em 2016, e em Goiânia e Fortaleza em 2018.

Nosso conjunto de membros na América Latina tem crescido de forma constante ao longo do tempo. Atualmente, trabalhamos com mais de 3.300 membros em toda a região; e o maior número está concentrado no Brasil, com mais de 1.900 membros. A maioria deles representa universidades, sociedades e organizações governamentais, seguidas por bibliotecas e fundações que também registram seus trabalhos conosco. No total, nossos membros no Brasil já contribuíram com mais de 2 milhões de registros de metadados abertos para o Research Nexus.

No dia 3 de março, recebemos 60 participantes, entre os quais membros, patrocinadores, prestadores de serviços e pesquisadores. Cada um desses grupos traz perspectivas e experiências únicas, e utilizam nossos serviços de diversas maneiras. Também contamos com a presença de quatro embaixadores da Crossref: Pedro López Casique, do México; Juan Felipe Vargas e Nicolás Mejía Torres, da Colômbia; e Edilson Damasio, do Brasil, e também colegas da SciELO Brasil.

Foto: Equipe e embaixadores da Crossref: Leandro Contreras, Pablo López Casique, Nicolás Mejía Torres, Luis Montilla, Susan Collins, Juan Felipe Vargas, Jason Portenoy e Isaac Farley

Começamos o dia com ênfase na qualidade dos metadados, no papel dos DOIs da Crossref e nas boas práticas de registro de conteúdo. Apresentamos uma visão geral das nossas ferramentas: Metadata Manager, atualizado para registro de registros e os Participation Reports para verificar a integridade dos metadados. Pedro, que também é especialista em suporte a publicações no Public Knowledge Project (PKP), apresentou uma visão geral do trabalho com a plataforma Open Journals Systems (OJS), amplamente utilizada por nossos membros em todo o Brasil.

Foto: Pedro López Casique, da PKP, destacando o Brasil como o segundo maior usuário de revistas hospedadas no OJS em todo o mundo.

No decorrer do dia, passamos a abordar temas mais técnicos, incluindo a recuperação de metadados, o uso de metadados para a visibilidade e a integridade da pesquisa, e erros comuns de metadados no processo de registro. Roberta Takenaka, desenvolvedora de sistemas da SciELO, apresentou uma visão geral e discutiu os desafios da adoção de DOIs na rede SciELO.

Este foi um evento trilíngue, com apresentações em inglês, português e espanhol, com interpretação simultânea disponível para participantes e palestrantes.

Photo: Isaac Farley discussing metadata updates.

Durante a sessão, pedimos aos participantes que compartilhassem comentários sobre o valor da Crossref para suas organizações, e sobre os desafios que enfrentam ao trabalhar conosco. Os participantes destacaram a persistência, o compromisso com o desenvolvimento científico, a padronização de metadados, a interoperabilidade e o aumento da visibilidade do conteúdo como benefícios importantes. O desafio mais comum relatado foi o idioma - a maior parte da nossa documentação está em inglês, o que dificulta para muitos a utilização plena dos recursos disponíveis. Vários mencionaram que os custos podem ser um desafio para algumas organizações, e outros observaram que mais oportunidades de treino, ministradas em português do Brasil, seriam bem-vindas.

Foto: Participantes conversando durante o intervalo da manhã.

As sessões de perguntas e respostas abordaram uma ampla variedade de tópicos técnicos, incluindo integrações com o OJS, interpretação de relatórios mensais de resolução, atualização em massa de metadados e implementação do Crossmark. Durante os intervalos para o café, as discussões continuaram enquanto os participantes compartilhavam suas ideias, perguntas adicionais e comentários conosco.

Após as apresentações, realizamos sessões em pequenos grupos com os participantes para coletar feedback sobre dois projetos em andamento. Leandro Contreras, nosso novo pesquisador de experiência do usuário (UX), reuniu-se com um grupo para coletar informações sobre como os usuários interagem com nosso site, como parte do nosso projeto de melhoria da arquitetura do site. Luis Montilla, gerente da comunidade técnica, conduziu uma discussão em grupo com editores para aprender mais sobre os fluxos de trabalho editoriais e como eles interagem com metadados acadêmicos.

Muitos dos participantes também se juntaram a nós no nosso Metadata Sprint, realizado nos dias seguintes, para explorar os usos de metadados acadêmicos abertos na criação de novas ferramentas e soluções.

Esses eventos foram uma oportunidade para nos reconectarmos com a comunidade, coletar feedback para criar materiais adicionais de treinamento e apoio, compartilhar desenvolvimentos e recursos, e fortalecer nossos laços com os membros e principais colaboradores. Ana Marlene Freitas de Morais, ex-vice-presidente da Associação Brasileira de Editores Científicos (ABEC Brasil), nosso maior patrocinador no Brasil, destacou a importância das colaborações presenciais, como este evento, para o engajamento no Brasil. Por meio de nossos Embaixadores, Patrocinadores e outros parceiros, nosso objetivo é continuar construindo relacionamentos duradouros e apoiando nossa crescente comunidade no Brasil.

Agradecemos especialmente aos nossos anfitriões da Fundação Getúlio Vargas pelo generoso uso de suas instalações e pela equipe de apoio.

Reflections from Bangkok

Amanda Bartell — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Each organization in the global community of Crossref members (that’s currently over 25k organizations in 166 different countries) plays a key role in building the Research Nexus. Any opportunity we have to meet with our members in person is a highlight and a way for us to learn more from each other. The month of January saw three of us travel to Bangkok to attend the first-ever Charleston Conference organised in Asia and to meet with our growing community in Thailand.

The Charleston Conference is a meeting for librarians and publishers that is held annually in the USA. This year, the conference was held for the first time in Asia, and attending the event allowed us to connect with the library publishing community from the region and others, who had travelled from around the world to meet in picturesque Bangkok. Half of Crossref members are now based in Asia, so visiting Thailand gave us a great opportunity to meet members and colleagues from the continent in person.

At the conference, Robbykha moderated a panel discussion on “the importance of metadata for Asian scholarship”, capturing voices from across Asia on how open metadata is being used for discoverability, integrity, and assessment by different scholarly communities in the region.

Our visit to Bangkok culminated with a one-day Crossref Bangkok event that we had organised to meet with Crossref members in Thailand. We were also able to visit The Thailand National Library, who are the Thai ISSN Centre and stewards of so much of Thailand’s cultural heritage.

We were very grateful to our colleagues in Thailand for their warm welcome, particularly during the official mourning period for Her Majesty Queen Sirikit The Queen Mother.

Left hand photo: Madhura Amdekar (Crossref), Guo Xiaofeng (Crossref Ambassador and Crossref sponsors Sin-Chn Scientific Press Pte. Ltd (Singapore)), Robbykha Rosalien (Crossref), Mochammad Tanzil Multazam (Crossref sponsors Relawan Jurnal Indonesia), Prof. Dr. Namtip Wipawin (Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University and Crossref sponsors National Research Council of Thailand), Amanda Bartell (Crossref). Right hand photo: Members discussing challenges and opportunities for Thai scholarship.

Charleston Asia conference - a reminder of the importance of infrastructure

The three-day Charleston Asia conference gave us a great opportunity to meet with members and colleagues based in Asia, and hear about areas of focus and concern. It was refreshing to hear about the global challenges of access to knowledge, AI, and preserving research integrity, within the context of Asia’s institutional, linguistic, and economic environment. And it was wonderful to hear about so many projects (many at national level) integrating Crossref data to lead their strategies and even shape policy decisions.

Three inspiring keynotes covered many of the challenges of scholarship in Asia, covering local, national, and regional approaches.

Distinguished Professor Joyashree Roy (Asian Institute of Technology) presented her work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the United Nations. She highlighted how those in Asia are the most likely to be impacted by climate change, but underrepresented in the research due to structural, linguistic, and financial barriers. She explained how publishers and librarians can remove some of these barriers.

Professor Devika Madalli (Director of INFLIBNET Centre) talked about the various services that her team has created at a national level in India to reduce country and institution-wide inequalities. INFLIBNET subscribes to Crossref’s Metadata Plus service, and it’s great to see our community’s metadata being part of such useful services.

Professor Bin Zhang (Library Director, Renmin University of China) talked about the challenges of access to scholarship across different regions in China, and how investment in infrastructure is making a difference here.

There were many other fascinating sessions during the three days, including our panel discussion, moderated by Robbykha Rosalien.

The importance of metadata for Asian scholarship - our panel at Charleston Asia

Metadata isn’t just a technical detail—it’s the backbone of discoverability, credibility, trust, and impact in scholarly communication. In our panel session, we explored metadata trends across Asia and discussed how open metadata is shaping research visibility, integrity, and assessment in the region. Our panel brought together diverse voices: Mochammad Tanzil Multazam from Relawan Jurnal Indonesia, Ms. Guo Xiaofeng, Crossref Ambassador in Asia and Director at Sin-Chn Scientific Press (Singapore), and Prof. Dr. Namtip Wipawin from the Department of Information Science, School of Liberal Arts, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University in Thailand. Each shared experiences of challenges and solutions in adopting open metadata practices and leveraging metadata effectively.

Photo: panel session - Ms. Guo Xiaofeng, Prof. Dr. Namtip Wipawin, Mochammad Tanzil Multazam

The session opened with Robbykha presenting a striking graph: Crossref now has more than 14,000 members from Asia, representing over half of its global membership. As of January 19th, 2026, there are 13.8 million registered DOI records from Asia. Indonesia leads with 3.02 million registered DOIs, followed by Japan with 2.73 million, India with 2.52 million, South Korea with 1.28 million, and Türkiye rounding out the top five with 793,198. These numbers highlight Asia’s growing role in global scholarly communication.

Photo: Robbykha presenting the Asian metadata coverage from Crossref data

Mochammad Tanzil Multazam shared how government support for persistent identifiers and metadata in Indonesia has fueled one of the largest and fastest‑growing open‑access journal ecosystems worldwide. Of 27,807 national journals, nearly half already register DOIs and metadata records (SINTA, 13 January 2026). Prof. Dr. Namtip Wipawin provided an overview of the metadata landscape in Thai academia, highlighting both progress and ongoing challenges. Meanwhile, Ms. Guo Xiaofeng presented a case study on open metadata utilization across Asia, showing practical examples of how metadata strengthens discoverability and trust.

Participants emphasized the importance of metadata for Asian scholarship: enhancing discoverability, accessibility, and providing rich, accurate data. Yet challenges remain. One of the most pressing issues is multilingual content, and the best way to reflect this in the metadata. For our current advice on multilingual metadata, take a look at our documentation and this interesting discussion on our forum. Our Metadata Advisory Group currently has a working group of members and metadata users discussing this further, to help ensure our future schema updates help to accurately reflect multilingual metadata.

Poll results from the panel audience on key challenges to the adoption of rich metadata

Crossref Bangkok - a reminder of the importance of visibility

The day after the Charleston Asia conference, around 75 attendees joined us for our Crossref Bangkok event. The event reinforced how valuable opportunities to interact directly with our members are for learning about the challenges that they face in scholarly publishing and to explore together how those can be overcome. We were supported during the event by our ambassadors Guo Xiaofeng, Amber Osman and Prof. MI Subhani, and by Prof. Dr. Namtip Wipawin and her team, who lead the sponsor organization from National Research Council of Thailand. We were also grateful to Mark Husskison from PKP for attending and helping attendees with some of their knottier OJS questions.

Most of the event attendees were from universities, which are our existing members in Thailand, and we were also joined by a team from the National Library of Thailand.

Photo: Participants from across Thailand’s research and publishing landscape

We started the day by hearing more about who was in attendance, where they had travelled from, and what they hoped to get out of the day. We moved on to an introduction to Crossref and DOI metadata records, which provided a refresher on the benefits and obligations of Crossref membership and highlighted the importance of rich metadata for discoverability and research integrity. Next up, we split up into small groups to discuss and share the challenges and opportunities in scholarly publishing in Thailand. From across the discussion groups, there was one word that kept coming up again and again: visibility. Attendees shared how visibility is both a challenge and an opportunity. They appreciate that registering rich metadata records with Crossref - which are then shared with the global scholarly ecosystem - provides them with a way to make their content more visible, but agreed that this isn’t without challenges. Attendees welcomed the in-person meeting, and asked for more training and support from Crossref, particularly in registering content. (We shared details of our regular “Getting Started at Crossref” webinars for new members, and our regular “Metadata Health Checks” for longer term members, and we’ll be thinking about how to support members in Asia with more training).

During the afternoon, we heard more from Prof. Dr. Namtip Wipawin on the importance of metadata for raising the visibility of Thai research. We then ran a practical session, explaining how to add (and update) metadata records for those using our new Metadata Manager, and those using the OJS platform. These were followed by a practical session, with participants exploring their own Participation Reports, and discussing how to fill in any gaps in their metadata. The new CSV download for metadata gaps was particularly useful. It was great to support members in adding in their missing references through the OJS platform live, by properly activating the OJS references plugin.

Attending the Crossref Bangkok Workshop made it clear that being a part of Crossref goes far beyond simply assigning DOIs, it is about contributing to a global research community. The sessions highlighted how rich metadata, such as references, abstracts, ORCID iDs, and funding information, play a vital role in making Thai research more visible and accessible worldwide. There was also a strong emphasis on the importance of English metadata and standard identifiers in overcoming language and name-related challenges. Overall, the workshop showed how high-quality metadata can help bring Thai research onto the global stage and strengthen its international recognition.

– Prof. Dr. Namtip Wipawin on behalf of the National Research Council of Thailand.

Visiting the National Library of Thailand - a reminder of the importance of stewardship

The warm welcome from National Library of Thailand team: Ms. Thanachcha Suwannavach (Librarian, Practitioner Level), Ms. Thitima Kumkhun (Librarian, Professional Level), Ms. Linda Puechsee (Librarian, Professional Level), Madhura Amdekar (Crossref), Robbykha Rosalien (Crossref), Amanda Bartell (Crossref), Ms. Bubphar Chuchat (Director of the National Library of Thailand), Dr. Prasittichai Lertratanakehakarn (Director of Information Resources Service Group), Ms. Rawiwan Putsorn (Director of Library Research and Development Group), Mrs. Atchara Jaruwan (Director of Information Resources Development Group), Mr. Jung Dippracone (Director of Manuscripts and Inscriptions Group), and Ms. Samachaya Dadrung (Librarian, Professional Level)

On our final day in Bangkok, we were lucky enough to visit with the team at the National Library of Thailand. They have a key role to play in scholarly publishing in Thailand as they run the National ISSN Centre. They are also stewards of much of Thailand’s cultural heritage, and we were honoured to view some of the artifacts that they look after.

Staff showcasing the digitization efforts at the National Library of Thailand — preserving knowledge and making it accessible for the future.

The role of DOI metadata in enhancing the visibility and accessibility of digital resources is vital. This experience has provided the National Library with a clearer strategic roadmap for establishing a DOI Center dedicated to rare materials and digital ancient manuscripts. This initiative aims to broaden the reach of these invaluable heritage resources, ensuring they are easily discoverable and accessible to a global audience.

– Ms. Bubphar Chuchat, Director of the National Library of Thailand

Wrapping up our visit, we left the National Library of Thailand feeling inspired. The team’s passion for preserving rare manuscripts while embracing digital tools shows how heritage and innovation can go hand in hand. It was a reminder that stewardship isn’t only about looking after the past; it’s about making sure knowledge and culture continue to thrive for the future.

Introducing board meeting summaries, starting with the January 2026 meeting

Lucy Ofiesh — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In an ongoing effort to make more of our operations transparent, we have decided to start sharing summaries of our board meetings on the blog. We already post our board resolutions, but the summaries will give a bit more information on what the board discusses that may or may not show up on the list of resolutions.

We do observe the Chatham House Rule for our board discussions, so we won’t disclose who says what, and there will still be executive sessions that discuss confidential matters that we can’t share. But those discussions constitute a minority of the time we spend together, so the summaries will cover much of what the board discusses.

Let’s start with our recent meeting in January, which is online and lasts one hour.

Crossref Board of Directors Meeting Executive Summary, January 22nd, 2026

The January meeting is held primarily to conduct board business at the start of the board term.

Board business

The board conducted elections for this year’s board leadership, and approved each of the following positions:

Board Chair: Marin Dacos
Board Treasurer: James Phillpotts
Executive Committee members (3 seats): Rose L’Huillier; Rebecca Wambua; and Aaron Wood
Board Secretary and Assistant Secretary: Lucy Ofiesh, Ed Pentz
Audit Committee Chair: Ashley Towne
Nominating Committee Chair: Nick Lindsay

The board then turned to review and adopt the minutes from the November board meeting, December board meeting, and October executive committee meeting.

The board discussed a proposal to update the financial authorization approval levels, a set of guidelines established by the board to define the limits on the approval of expenses that are part of Crossref’s Financial and Accounting Operating Policies. The board adopted changes to the policy that would bring it in line with the scale of Crossref’s business operations.

Looking ahead to 2026

Ed Pentz gave a brief overview of what the board can expect at the 2026 board meetings and reviewed topics that will be discussed at each meeting.

The board next meets in early March.

Insights from a roundtable on author affiliation metadata

Amanda French — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been said that Americans are unusual in tending to ask “Where do you work?” as an initial question upon introduction to a new acquaintance, indicating a perhaps unhealthy preoccupation with work as identity. But in the context of published research, “What is this author’s affiliation?” is a question of global importance that goes beyond just wanting to know the name – and perhaps prestige level – of the place a researcher works.

When collected, used, and analyzed at scale, data about author affiliations can provide intriguing insights about international collaboration trends, signal trust and lack of trust in particular research institutions, generate business intelligence for publishers, help universities track the work their researchers do, help funders demonstrate the impact of their funding, and much more.

In November we partnered with OA Switchboard to organize a roundtable on author affiliation metadata for the Crossref community, service and infrastructure providers, production vendors, data scientists, researchers, and librarians. We aimed to bring together scholarly information professionals with many diverse perspectives; ultimately, participants from more than 40 organizations joined the roundtable to share their experiences and their thoughts.

In focusing on a single type of metadata, we hoped to focus our discussions, as well. Similarly, in October the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information organized a roundtable on “Moving Funding Metadata Forward” in which it became clear that “improving the quality and coverage of funding metadata was on the agenda of many organisations and there was a strong interest in collaborating on practical next steps.”

While many of the issues and solutions discussed at both roundtables are similar, in the course of the author affiliation metadata roundtable we identified some unique challenges as well as benefits related to this particular flavor of information. In this blog post, I’ll share these insights.

Insights from presenters

I opened the roundtable with a brief introduction and a working definition of affiliation metadata: names and/or identifiers such as Research Organization Registry (ROR) IDs for organizations where research was conducted or with which authors and contributors are associated, usually officially, as in their place of employment.

Next, to create a shared context for discussion, we heard four presentations on the current state of author affiliation metadata, its importance, and Crossref’s ongoing initiative to enhance it automatically.

Nees Jan van Eck of Leiden University’s Center for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) shared observations on the state of author affiliations from a preprint titled “Crossref as a source of open bibliographic metadata” that presents the findings of an analysis performed annually since 2021. Nees’s key points:

Crossref is a foundational data source for bibliographic metadata.
Affiliation metadata is available for only 1 out of 3 journal articles in Crossref for the period 2023-2024.
There is considerable variation in the extent to which Crossref members deposit affiliation metadata.
Downstream sources try to fill gaps using suboptimal approaches, leading to missing, inaccurate, and inconsistent linking of publications to institutions.
Publications lacking affiliation metadata in Crossref are less visible in bibliometric applications, analyses, studies, and tools (such as the open edition of the Leiden Ranking of over 2800 universities).

Next, Yvonne Campfens of OA Switchboard reiterated the desirability of the Crossref community providing complete and accurate author affiliation metadata at the source. Yvonne called upon publishers to “Integrate metadata creation in your systems and workflows before publication and relay it throughout the editorial, production, and publication processes.”

Yvonne pointed out that in the context of managing Open Access agreements, publishers ought to keep in mind that providing good affiliation metadata improves customer satisfaction, since institutions and consortia need to have that information in order to connect research to the correct organization. In closing, Yvonne featured best practices from OA Switchboard’s Data Quality Challenge:

eLife captures affiliations at submissions with “author select,” ensuring that ROR IDs are introduced early and verified before publication, coupled with a quality assurance process during proofing. (See also our piece on Metadata Excellence Award winner eLife.)
EMS Press captures metadata via manuscript extraction as early as at submission, building on globally valid identifiers whenever possible (ROR IDs, DOIs, ORCIDs).
Pensoft Publishers uses AI-assisted metadata extraction with human review and in-house metadata validation.
Beilstein-Institut performs post-acceptance metadata quality assurance through automation and expert review.
The Royal Society embeds metadata in OA payment and agreement workflows.
American Chemical Society (ACS) has a multi-method persistent identifier matching strategy with near-complete coverage.
The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) combines AI-powered submission tools with editorial oversight via expert manual checks. (See also our piece on Metadata Excellence Award winner ASM.)
Rockefeller University Press (RUP) maintains ROR IDs across the full publishing workflow with “author select” at submission through metadata deposits upon publication. (See also the ROR case study on RUP.)

Adam Day of Clear Skies Ltd began his talk by wryly framing the first and second rules of data science as contradictory: “Never fix data: always use sources that produce high-quality data in the first place,” but also “Get good at fixing data, because you will have to.” Adam went on to demonstrate the central role author affiliation metadata plays in research integrity investigations, displaying anonymized data for institutions with a high number of alerts. In conclusion, Adam reiterated the importance of author affiliation metadata to research integrity efforts:

Data analysis is critical to research integrity.
Quality data helps enormously by giving oversight, saving time, and assisting investigations.

Lastly, our own Director of Technology Dominika Tkaczyk gave an account of our plans to enrich author affiliation metadata by matching organization name text strings to ROR IDs as part of our metadata matching initiative. A strategy for performing such matching has already been developed and tested and an open dataset of results made available. Tests on a set of 3,000 affiliations sampled from our metadata show that the strategy can be expected to match 95 million ROR IDs to organization names with 97.35% precision, an astronomical increase over the less than 1 million ROR IDs deposited in Crossref records to date.

Dominika concluded the presentation portion of the session by reiterating that our planned enrichment of author affiliation metadata

Will use flexible and transparent matching strategies (and open code),
Will welcome community participation in developing new strategies, and
Will be available in the REST API.

Automatic matching of organization names to ROR IDs in author affiliations cannot solve the problem of missing organization names, of course, but it represents a huge leap forward in addressing metadata quality issues.

All of our speakers’ presentations are available on Zenodo at https://doi-org.pluma.sjfc.edu/10.13003/661591chqlyw.

Insights into challenges

In the next stage of the event, participants broke into six breakout groups to identify factors contributing to incomplete or inaccurate affiliation metadata. Participants were pre-assigned to groups randomly by role to ensure a variety of perspectives in every discussion.

At least two participants, it should be noted, pointed out that it would be helpful to agree on a definition of “complete” and “accurate” affiliation metadata, which in itself is a challenge, and one we did not address in this roundtable. For instance, practices most recently have trended away from defining a complete author affiliation in open metadata as including an institutional address, although many internal databases might include such information separately.

Even without such definitions, however, all six groups were able to identify several general areas for attention, and one participant provided a particularly helpful categorization of these areas that is largely reused here.

Inherent data complexity

Research organizations have names in different languages, abbreviations, and many other name variants.
Research organizations have frequent name changes, mergers, and rebranding.
Research organizations have different degrees, levels, and complexity of hierarchical granularity, and authors, publishers, and software systems are often misaligned as to which level in an organization’s structure is appropriate to use in a particular instance.
Research organizations often lack official policies on how affiliations should be written, leading to hundreds of variations for a single institution.

Corresponding authors often submit information for all co-authors, which can lead to inaccuracies.
Many authors have multiple profiles across multiple submission systems, which can introduce errors.
Authors may have “octopus affiliations,” claiming affiliations with many institutions that are difficult to verify.
Authors may fail to update affiliations when changing institutions between manuscript acceptance and publication.
Authors may demonstrate “apathy” when repeatedly filling out submission forms, sometimes providing incomplete, inconsistent, or incorrect information.
On occasion, authors might even provide false or purchased affiliations, which of course is a significant research integrity concern.

Technical barriers

Many manuscript tracking and peer review systems, especially legacy systems, lack structured fields for affiliations or don’t support open organization identifiers like ROR.
Some systems limit authors to a single affiliation, despite many researchers having multiple institutional connections.
Some systems only collect affiliation information for the corresponding author.
Some systems link affiliations to user accounts instead of to publications.
Different systems use competing identifier registries, including proprietary identifier registries, creating interoperability challenges.

Publisher practices

Even when publishers improve current metadata collection practices, historical data correction is resource-intensive and often not prioritized.
Publishers collect affiliation information at submission but don’t ensure that it is maintained throughout all stages of the publication process and deposited in metadata.
Some publishers are unaware of the importance of author affiliation metadata or do not prioritize its improvement.
Some publishers deliberately choose not to deposit affiliation metadata to Crossref, viewing it as value-added information they’ve invested in curating.

Insights into solutions

Naturally, we didn’t rest at identifying challenges: after a break, we gathered in the same groups to brainstorm approaches to improving author affiliation metadata.

Adopt collective approaches

Collective action, where corrections and improvements made by various stakeholders flow back into shared systems, has historically worked for proprietary systems and could be even more powerful with open infrastructure.
Since those who do not provide metadata “upstream” will inevitably have it provided for them “downstream” by multiple separate entities using multifarious methods, provenance metadata indicating who asserted author affiliations and how (whether automatically or with the author’s or editor’s input) would help metadata users assess trust levels.

Engage authors and institutions

Reach out to authors and institutions to educate them on the need for more consistent affiliation reporting, especially in terms of language, name format, and degree of hierarchical granularity.
Demonstrate the benefit to institutions of maintaining accurate records in registries like ROR, including abbreviations and name variants.
Publishers and/or software systems should allow authors to review (though not necessarily edit) affiliation information during the proofing process to verify accuracy. Authors should not, however, need to know, see, or use ROR IDs.

Improve the tech

Publishers would welcome submission systems that incorporate structured fields for author affiliations with well-designed auto-suggestions linked to ROR or other organization identifiers.
Making affiliation data mandatory at submission could significantly improve capture rates, although it would be important to ensure that independent researchers can use these systems as well.
Enable collection of affiliations for all authors, not just the corresponding author.
Pull in verified affiliation information from ORCID.
Increasingly, intelligent matching systems can be implemented to reduce author burden and perhaps also increase accuracy and completeness of metadata.
Better crosswalks between different organization identifier systems would make it vastly easier for publishers to maintain better metadata. Since open registries cannot include proprietary information, proprietary registries should provide their customers with crosswalks to all standard open identifiers.

Encourage publisher best practices

Publishers can use already-available tools to help assess and improve the quality of both new and legacy author affiliation metadata.
Share the benefits of improved author affiliation metadata for internal and external analytics, customer satisfaction, and research integrity.
Identify best practices in collecting and structuring author affiliation metadata.
Understand that the entire research ecosystem would benefit from publishers sharing collected affiliation data with Crossref.

It’s worth mentioning that these solutions are heterogeneous: not all strategies can be implemented by any one actor nor even by any one sector of our profession. Clearly, collaborative action is necessary for substantive change.

Moving forward

The affiliations metadata roundtable represented an important step in addressing affiliation metadata challenges in a productive and collaborative way. If there was a consensus, it was that while perfect completeness and accuracy of author affiliation metadata may not be achievable (or even definable), incremental improvements can substantially enhance the quality and availability of affiliation metadata for the entire scholarly information community.

Here at Crossref, we intend to use the insights from this roundtable to inform our support of the Crossref community, including publishers, service providers, and metadata users. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions on this issue! Share your thoughts with Amanda French at alfrench@crossref.org.

References

van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2025). Crossref as a source of open bibliographic metadata (No. smxe5_v2). MetaArXiv. https://doi-org.pluma.sjfc.edu/10.31222/osf.io/smxe5_v2
Tkaczyk, D. (2025). Crossref relationships involving research organisations [Dataset]. Zenodo. https://doi-org.pluma.sjfc.edu/10.5281/zenodo.15254993
French, A., van Eck, N. J., Campfens, Y., Day, A., & Tkaczyk, D. (2026, January 19). Affiliations Metadata Roundtable 2025—All Presentations. https://doi-org.pluma.sjfc.edu/10.13003/661591chqlyw

Participating organizations


Africa PID Alliance / TCC Africa	Frontiers Media SA
American Association of Cancer Research (AACR)	Iowa State
American Chemical Society (ACS)	Kriyadocs / Exeter Premedia Services
American Physical Society (APS)	MDPI
American Society for Microbiology (ASM)	Noyam Publishers
Aptara	OpenAIRE / OpenOrgs
Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC)	Optica Publishing Group
Atypon	ORCID
Beilstein-Institut	Oxford University Press
California Digital Library (CDL)	Public Knowledge Project (PKP)
Cambridge University Press	Public Library of Science (PLOS)
Carnegie Mellon University	River Valley Technologies
CHORUS	Rockefeller University Press
Clarivate / Web of Science	SAGE Publications
Copernicus GmBH	Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information
Curtin University / Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI)	Silverchair / ScholarOne
De Gruyter Brill	Springer Science & Business
Digital Science / Figshare	TNQTech
Digital Science / Symplectic Elements	University of Laval
eLife	University of Chicago Press
Elsevier BV	University of Split
Enago

Crossref at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2025

Helena Cousijn — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Frankfurt Book Fair is the largest book fair in the world, and therefore a key event on our calendar. Held annually in Frankfurt, Germany, the 77th Frankfurt Book Fair (October 15–19, 2025) saw 118,000 trade visitors and 120,000 private visitors from 131 countries. The Crossref booth was located, as usual, in Hall 4.0 where all the stands with information about academic publishing can be found. Four Crossref colleagues attended the Book Fair this year, and in this blog post, you can read more about their meetings, experiences, and plans.

First timer fun at the Frankfurt Fair - Helena

Even though I’ve been working in scholarly comms for over 10 years, I’d never had a chance to visit the Frankfurt Book Fair. I was therefore really excited to have an opportunity to attend this year, and it didn’t disappoint! I arrived on Monday, October 13, in time for the STM dinner, which proved a great opportunity to meet with Crossref members and collaborators. On Tuesday, I attended the STM conference with the exciting theme of ‘The role of publishers in science diplomacy’. I think my favorite part of the day was the last panel, where the panelists realised that even though they represent different groups, in the end, they all have the same goals and are all working towards better science and dissemination.

On Wednesday, it was time to head over to our booth, where we prepared for the interesting conversations ahead. My meetings were mainly focused on collaborations in the area of research integrity, as Crossref plans to run pilots with potential partners next year. In-person meetings at the fair were a good opportunity to discuss in more detail which kinds of integrity checks could be useful to our members. I also had several meetings with organizations functioning as Service Providers –– depositing content on behalf of members –– who are eagerly awaiting the launch of our renewed Service Providers program next year. In these conversations, we shared our thinking about requirements for Crossref Service Providers and got input from organizations with experience serving our member community. Overall, it was a great opportunity to see members and collaborators in person, and I’ve already put the 2026 Frankfurt Book Fair in my calendar!

An exciting comeback - Maryna

If last year, I was a debutante at the Frankfurt Book Fair, 2025 marked an exciting comeback. It’s always a pleasure to spend time chatting with people you usually only meet through email or Zoom. Working remotely as part of a global team is something I truly value about Crossref, but it also makes those in-person moments even more special. You get to solve issues that have been sitting on your to-do list over lunch, brainstorm ideas while walking to the venue, get immediate advice in a meeting—and, of course, talk about dogs over dinner.

Frankfurt was busy but well organised. Our booth was lively with a mix of planned and spontaneous meetings. It was nice to reconnect with members and sponsors I’ve worked with over the years. We even gave an early look at the new Participation Reports before the official release (what a thrill!). There were good conversations about deprecating co-access, the importance of title transfers, and how we can keep improving the member experience. One highlight: I spoke with a prospective member about our membership model and fee structure, and they joined the following week! Their account is already active, with a prefix assigned, which was great to see.

Another key topic was the importance of ROR IDs. I talked with several publishers about how they could be implemented across other systems. At one point, I spotted an issue with unregistered DOIs and was able to fix it on the spot by finalising a title transfer—we’d had permission but never received the formal request—so it was satisfying to close that loop in real time.

Being a relatively small team serving a global membership of more than 23,000 and growing, it’s not possible to meet with every member face-to-face to respond to every question. Our team works hard to respond to all queries by email, but it’s undeniably faster and more productive in person. That’s why we keep returning to the Frankfurt Book Fair year after year—you can definitely count on seeing us again next year!

Third time at bat - Luis

The Frankfurt Book Fair is always an incredible opportunity to connect with our community. We come prepared with highlights of the year, plans for developments and upcoming releases, and remind the members we meet to participate and vote in the annual elections. But most of what we learn happens during the informal moments––meetings, drop-ins, and chats over coffee and tea––where people discuss what they’re working on, trends, and interests of the scholarly and publishing community.

This year, some of those conversations included meeting someone working with groups from Egypt and the UAE who are developing tools around our metadata. They wanted to talk through REST API use, recent Crossref updates, and how retraction metadata could fit into their systems. Another person opened their participation report with us and were surprised to see their metadata showing 0% despite the team believing they were sending complete metadata, which led to a discussion about getting their internal workflows running again.

Booth days always fly by, but they’re deeply informative and insightful for teams that participate in person, as we can “cross-check” (pun intended) how our different support mechanisms help the community and how well we’re delivering our communications. There is a good mix of problem-solving and catching-up; often, we see members who prepare a list of questions because they find it easier to sit and navigate through them with our support or membership colleagues. Sometimes it’s about refreshing their understanding of what Crossref is and what we do, especially during team changes. We also spoke with a publisher preparing to adopt Crossmark. They wanted to check they were handling updates and relationships correctly, and mentioned that increasing transparency is becoming a priority for them. Someone else, working closely with a repository, asked about using the REST API or Metadata Plus to enrich their records.

A few visitors simply needed clarity––one was pleased to learn they could register reports and datasets after being told otherwise. Another visitor who registers a small number of book DOIs each year asked whether the Web Deposit Form was still the best fit. We walked through the Record Registration Form together, and its new editing features helped them plan for upcoming changes.

Personally, I enjoy seeing the cultural and organisational diversity of existing and potential Crossref members, ambassadors, sponsors, allies and colleagues from all over the world at our booth. If you have the opportunity to attend the Book Fair next year, please visit our booth and say hello!

This year’s Frankfurt Veteran - Paul

I think this is my 5th (?) Frankfurt book fair, and each year I come away thinking how much I appreciate the opportunity to speak with our members face to face, and I get to see and hear the impact that Crossref has, which is always such a pleasure.

This year, there were only four of us in attendance, and it felt busier than ever. We had a lot of pre-booked meetings at our wonderfully designed booth again (thanks to the amazing work of our colleague Rosa) but we also had lots of ad-hoc meetings, where members came up to say “hello”, “thank you” or ask about that really knotty, niche problem that they have, which they are not sure how to explain over email. From a technical support perspective, this is great, as we can go through these issues and get a resolution––or a solid background––without the delay and confusion of long email threads. I also worked with a member who got their IT department to send over a file there and then for us to work through and try to navigate a difficult question regarding reference matching and whether the simple text query form worked using an API, which others could use. These were just two examples of many in which it was much easier to sit down and work through issues directly at the fair.

So I would always say that if you are at the Frankfurt book fair, and you have one of these issues then it is a great opportunity to come by, say hello and work through it with us. We will send out a reminder before the fair in 2026 to get any meetings booked, or just come find us at the fair.

A highlight for me this year was also showing some of our members our new Participation Report. It’s had a visual update as well as some new functionality: you can download a gap report that lists DOI numbers of records that are missing the metadata element you choose, making it easier to identify and update missing metadata. I always like attending the Frankfurt Book Fair and so might be there next year. It’s an important opportunity for all Crossref colleagues to engage and meet our members––many for the first time.

Next year

Feeling inspired after all the great meetings and conversations we had this year, we immediately started planning for next year! We’ll definitely be in Frankfurt in 2026, where you can find our team at the Crossref booth. We’re also planning to organize another roundtable on the Monday before the fair, so put October 5-9, 2026, in your calendars and stay tuned for more details.

Meet the candidates and cast your vote in our 2025 Board elections

Lucy Ofiesh — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On behalf of the Nominating Committee, I’m pleased to share the slate of candidates for the 2025 board election.

Each year we do an open call for board interest. This year, the Nominating Committee received 51 submissions from members worldwide to fill five open board seats.

We have four large member seats and one small member seat open for election in 2025. We maintain a balanced board of 8 large member seats and 8 small member seats. Size is determined based on the organization’s membership tier (small members fall in the $0-$1,650 tiers and large members in the $3,900 - $50,000 tiers).

We were pleased to see the diversity in candidates, with applicants from 19 countries. The committee was keen to prepare a diverse slate of organization types, individual skills and perspectives, and global representation.

Tier 1, Small member seats (electing one candidate)

Rebecca Wambua, Distance, Open and e-Learning Practitioners’ Association of Kenya
Oscar Donde, Pan Africa Science Journal
Nwachukwu Egbunike, Pan-Atlantic University Press

Tier 2, Large member seats (electing four candidates)

Damian Bird, CABI
Rose L’Huillier, Elsevier
John Sivo, IEEE
Nick Lindsay, The MIT Press
Anjalie Nawaratne, Springer Nature

Please read the candidates’ statements

Every member has a vote

If your organisation is a voting member in good standing as of September 5th, 2025, you are eligible to vote.

The voting contact for your organisation will receive a ballot from eBallot, a third party election platform. You should receive your ballot by Wednesday, September 17th, and you will have until 12:00 UTC on October 22nd to submit your ballot.

The election results will be announced at Crossref2025, our annual online meeting on October 22nd, 2025.

Special thanks to the committee: James Phillpotts of Oxford University Press, Wendy Patterson of Beilstein Institut, Abiodun Falodun of University of Benin, Amanda Ward of Taylor & Francis, and Chaerul Umam of the National Library of Indonesia for the time they dedicated to reviewing the expressions of interest and participating in committee meetings.

If you have any questions about our election process, please contact me

Happy voting!

Crossref at Beijing International Book Fair 2025

Johanssen Obanda — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This June, we presented at the Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) and connected directly with our growing community in China. With a surge of interest from Chinese publishers and partners, it was clear: there’s a strong and rising curiosity around how metadata plays a vital role in maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record.

And we were not alone: our incredible Crossref Ambassadors based in the region joined us at the booth, and together we hosted visitors and answered questions. Throughout the fair, we engaged in passionate conversations, provided metadata guidance, and shared our knowledge as part of a panel session focused on how metadata supports scholarship. Ms. Ran Dang, Editorial Director at Atlantis Press (Springer Nature), supports Crossref outreach and advocates for Open Access and Open Science. Ms. Xiaofeng Guo, Director at Sin-Chn Scientific Press, leads DOI infrastructure efforts in China and supports Crossref members across the region. Mr. Gantulga Lkhagva, Founder and CEO of Mongolian Digital Knowledge Solutions and MongoliaJOL, works to strengthen local scholarly publishing and promote metadata best practices.

Photo: Crossref Ambassadors and Staff

This was the first time some of us had met in person after years of online collaboration, and the sense of connection and shared purpose was energising. Our Ambassadors also contributed to this post, sharing their favourite moments, key takeaways, and stories from the fair.

A snapshot from the panel discussion

During BIBF, we hosted a panel session focused on the role of metadata in supporting scholarship. Ms. Alicia Wang, Vice President - CNPIEC Kexin Technology Co., Ltd, Robbykha Rosalien, Membership Support Specialist - Crossref, Johanssen Obanda - Community Engagement Manager - Crossref, and our Ambassadors joined the panel, and we were glad to have a mix of Crossref members, Metadata Plus users, and curious participants join the discussion.

Photo: Panel session - Ms. Alicia Wang, Mr. Gantulga Lkhagva, Ms. Robbykha Rosalien, Mr. Johanssen Obanda, Ms. Xiaofeng Guo, Ms. Ran Dang.

Ms Xiaofeng Guo making a presentation about how metadata supports scholarship

Key questions from the session included the status of open abstracts in Crossref, how retracted articles affect citation tracking and research integrity, and what happens when DOIs no longer resolve due to unmaintained landing pages.

Robbykha explained our DOI resolution and archival systems, clarifying that DOIs are designed to always resolve, even when the original content moves or becomes unavailable. We also touched on the work Crossref is doing to support transparency around retractions, and the goals of The Initiative for Open Abstracts, which aims to make research summaries more accessible.

Metadata Plus use cases from China

Two of our Metadata Plus users were present during the panel and generously shared how they are leveraging Crossref metadata in their work.

Jie He from ScienceRiver described how their team translates Crossref metadata from English into Chinese, making it possible for users in China to search for relevant academic literature originally published outside the mainland. Their efforts open up global research to local audiences, bridging language and accessibility gaps. This conversation also led to broader discussions about multilingual metadata and the work our Metadata Advisory Group hopes to support in this area.

Eurasia Academic Publishing Group, based in Hong Kong, talked about using Crossref metadata coupled with AI approaches to develop a tool for readers, editors, and institutions to help assess the integrity of research articles and detect paper mills.

Reflections from our Ambassadors and the community

One common thread throughout our time at BIBF was the recognition that many of our resources, documentation, and support materials are still primarily in English. For Chinese-speaking community members who are new to Crossref or metadata concepts, this creates a pretty steep learning curve. We heard this clearly, and we know there’s work to do in making our services more accessible across languages.

From personal highlights to fascinating conversations, here’s what some of our Ambassadors had to say:

I am very happy to have met with colleagues from Crossref and several Ambassadors from Asia! We have met many times online, but this was the first time we met face-to-face and worked together to engage with our members and host events! I learned a great deal from our face-to-face exchanges, including updates on Crossref’s latest use cases, industry development trends, and even information about my colleagues’ hometowns. We built friendships and successfully participated in the first BIBF event for Crossref, which was the biggest takeaway!

我非常高兴，能够与Crossref的同事和亚洲的几位大使见面！我们曾经多次在网络会议中见面，但是这是第一次面对面，并且共同面对用户、举办活动！在我们面对面的交流中我也学到了很多，包括Crossref的最新应用案例，行业发展情况，甚至同事们自己家乡的情况！我们建立了友谊，成功举办了第一次BIBF活动，这是最大的收获！

At the BIBF exhibition and events, we had good conversations with our Chinese partners and some members, and learned about actual application needs and use cases, which was very helpful to me. Most of the people I met spoke Chinese, but their publishers or institutions may have come from countries and regions outside mainland China, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

在此次BIBF展览和活动中，我们与中国的合作伙伴以及很多用户面对面交流，了解到实际的应用需求和应用案例，这对我帮助很大。我接触的客户多半讲华语，但是他们的出版社或机构可能来自新加坡、香港、台湾等中国大陆以外的国家和地区。

I also participated in the BIBF Forum events held before the exhibition, including the PubTech Conference, the first STM Asia-Pacific Conference, and the networking dinner. These three events were jointly organised by China National Publications Import and Export (Group) Corporation (CNPIEC), STM, and the Chinese Society of China University Journals (SCUJ). During the events, I heard about the latest developments in the publishing industry and gained valuable insights into hot topics. I also met many new and old friends and partners, some from China and others from around the world. Interacting with them not only allowed me to reminisce about the past but also provided me with new perspectives and expanded my professional network.

我这次也参加了在展览之前举办的BIBF论坛活动，包括的PubTech论坛，以及首界STM亚太会议和交流晚宴。这三个活动是由中国图书进出口公司（CNPIEC）、STM和中国高校科技期刊研究会（SCUJ）联合举办的。在活动中我听到了很多出版行业的最新发展以及针对热点问题的真知灼见，见到了很多新老朋友和伙伴，他们部分来自中国，部分来自世界各地。与他们交流不仅让我重温旧时光，也获得了新的见解、新的人脉。

Discussion with Ms. Bo Li from China Education Publication Import & Export Corporation (CEPIEC) on matching papers with their funding grants from China. This is an excellent use case for Crossref’s Grant Linking System (GLS) service and related metadata. We introduced the GLS service and Crossref metadata to Ms. Bo Li and will follow up with her and her colleagues to help them use Crossref’s metadata to complete this task more easily.

与中国教育图书进出口公司的李博女士讨论为科研基金匹配项目资助的论文元数据。这是一个非常好的应用案例，可以利用Crossref的GLS服务以及相关元数据。我们向李博介绍了GLS服务以及元数据的相关情况，之后还将与她和她的同事进行深入讨论，帮助他们利用Crossref的元数据更快捷地完成此项工作。

Discussion with Dr. Zhu Xuefeng. Their team has developed an application that identifies research integrity issues in journals and articles. They primarily utilise Crossref metadata (including article metadata and retraction observation data), withdrarXiv, ORCID and Research Organization Registry (ROR) data, among others. By linking and integrating these data, they calculate the research integrity risk of relevant journals and articles, providing a reference for authors submitting manuscripts, editors reviewing manuscripts, and institutions monitoring research integrity issues.

与朱学峰博士的讨论。他们的团队开发了一款应用程序，识别期刊/文章的科研诚信问题。他们主要利用了Crossref元数据（包括文章元数据和撤稿观察数据），arXiv的撤回数据集，以及ORCID和ROR数据等，通过关联、集成这些数据计算相关期刊/文章的科研诚信风险，为作者投稿、编辑审稿、机构监测科研诚信问题等提供参考。

At the Crossref BIBF event, Ms. Wang Xuan, Vice President of CNPIEC Kexin Technology Co., Ltd, a Crossref sponsor in China, discussed the strong demand for reliable data sources when applying AI in the field of scientific research, as well as how Crossref metadata can provide strong support. She proposed that all AI products focusing on scientific research should show the original DOIs for the academic resources they cite in the results they provide to users, to enhance the reliability and traceability of data sources. She committed that her company, Ke Xin, as a provider of research AI assistants, will implement this functionality in its products and hopes to promote this as a best practice to all research AI application developers and providers. This reflects that, as cutting-edge technology advances and requirements for research integrity and compliance continue to rise, Crossref metadata continues to play an important role in scholarship and will become increasingly extensive and indispensable.

在Crossref BIBF活动上，中图科信公司（Crossref中国赞助机构）副总经理王轩女士在讨论中阐述了关于AI在科研领域应用时对于可信数据来源的强烈需求，以及Crossref元数据如何能提供有力支撑的想法。她倡议所有的科研AI产品在为用户提供结果时，应对引用的学术资源提供原始的DOI标识，以增强数据来源的可信度和可追踪性。她承诺中图科信公司作为科研AI助手的提供者将在其产品中实现这一功能，并希望能将此作为最佳实践向所有科研AI应用的开发者、提供者进行推广。这反映了随着前沿科技发展以及科研诚信与合规要求不断提升，Crossref元数据对于学术研究提供的支撑作用将越来越广泛、越来越重要。

Our annual open call for expressions of interest to join our board

Lucy Ofiesh — Wed, 14 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Crossref Nominating Committee invites expressions of interest to join the Board of Directors of Crossref for the term starting in January 2026. The committee will gather responses from those interested and create the slate of candidates that our membership will vote on in an election in September.

Expressions of interest will be due Monday, June 9th, 2025

This is an exciting time to join the board, as we have a number of active projects underway. Our focus is on how our community and metadata can contribute to ensuring the integrity of the scholarly record. We are redesigning our content system to better serve the changing needs of our community. We’re broadening our metadata record to capture richer funding and institutional affiliations. New board members will be part of on-going discussions about how to make our fees simpler and more equitable. Additionally, we envision a future where the scholarly record prioritizes relationships between research outputs to build a holistic research nexus. The board helps guide this work.

About our board elections

The board is elected through the “one member, one vote” policy wherein every member organisation of Crossref has a single vote to elect representatives to the Crossref board. Board terms are for three years, and this year, there are five seats open for election.

The board maintains a balance of seats, with eight seats for smaller members and eight seats for larger members (based on total revenue to Crossref). This is an effort to ensure that the scholarly community’s diversity of experiences and perspectives is represented in decisions made at Crossref.

This year, we will elect four of the larger member seats (membership tiers $3,900 and above) and one of the smaller member seats (membership tiers $1,650 and below). You don’t need to specify which seat you are applying for; we will provide that information to the nominating committee.

The online election will open in September, with results announced at the annual meeting scheduled for October 22nd. New members will begin their term in January 2026.

About the Nominating Committee

The Nominating Committee reviews the expressions of interest and selects a slate of candidates for election. The slate put forward will exceed the total number of open seats. The committee considers the statements of interest, organisational size, geography, and experience.

James Phillpotts*, Oxford University Press, committee chair
Abiodun Falodun, University of Benin
Wendy Patterson*, Beilstein Institut
Chaerul Umam, National Library of Indonesia
Amanda Ward*, Taylor & Francis

(*) indicates Crossref board member

Board roles and responsibilities

Crossref’s services provide a central infrastructure for scholarly communications. Crossref’s board helps shape the future of our services and by extension, impacts the broader scholarly ecosystem. We are looking for board members to contribute their experience and perspective.

The role of the board at Crossref is to provide strategic and financial oversight of the organisation, as well as guidance to the Executive Director and the staff leadership team, with the key responsibilities being:

Setting the strategic direction for the organisation;
Providing financial oversight; and
Approving new policies and services.

The board represents of our membership base and guides the staff leadership team on trends affecting scholarly communications.

The work of the board takes place in board meetings and board committees. The board sets strategic directions for the organisation while also providing oversight into policy changes and implementation. Board members join four meetings each year that typically take place in January, March, July, and November. The July meeting is in-person and may take place in a variety of international locations; travel support is provided when needed. January, March, and November board meetings are held virtually, and all committee meetings take place virtually. Each board member should sit on at least one Crossref committee. Care is taken to accommodate the wide range of time zones in which our board members live.

While the expressions of interest are specific to an individual, the seat that is elected to the board belongs to the member organisation. The primary board member also names an alternate who may attend meetings in the event that the primary board member is unable to. There is no personal financial obligation to sit on the board. The member organisation must remain in good standing.

Board members are expected to be comfortable assuming the responsibilities listed above and to prepare and participate in board meeting discussions.

Who can apply to join the board?

Any active member of Crossref can apply to join the board. Crossref membership is open to organisations that produce content, such as academic presses, commercial publishers, standards organisations, and research funders.

What does the committee look for?

The committee looks for skills and experience that will complement the rest of the board. Candidates from countries and regions not currently reflected on the board are strongly encouraged to apply. Successful candidates often have some or all of these characteristics:

Demonstrate a commitment to or understanding of our strategic agenda or the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure
Have expertise that may be underrepresented on the board currently;
Hold decision-making positions in their organisations;
Have experience with governance or community involvement;
Represent member organisations that are active in the scholarly communications ecosystem;
Demonstrate metadata best practices as shown in the member’s participation report

The board is also encouraging Crossref members who are research funders to apply.

What does the application evaluation process look like?

Open call for board interest, May 14 to June 9th: Any active member in good standing can apply for a seat on the board. This includes direct members, sponsored members, and GEM members. Sponsoring organisations, service providers, and Metadata Plus subscribers who are not also members are not eligible to sit on the board.

Application review, June through August: Applications will be reviewed by our Nominating Committee. We also gather internal information about the member organisation, such as metadata habits, history with Crossref, any previous experience in Crossref working groups or community initiatives.

We might also refer to external information to help the committee’s review including LinkedIn profiles or member organisation websites and publications.

Brief interviews with final candidates, August: The committee will hold brief virtual interviews with the top candidates before finalising the slate of nominations.

Announcement of the slate and election, September: The committee will announce the final slate of candidates in September and the online election will begin, culminating at the annual meeting at the end of October.

How to apply

Please click here to submit your expression of interest by Monday, June 9th. We ask for a brief statement about how your organisation could enhance the Crossref board and a brief personal statement about your interest and experience with Crossref.

Please contact me with any questions at voting@crossref.org

Reflections from Crossref Accra 2025 - Strengthening open science and partnerships in Ghana

Johanssen Obanda — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Crossref is a membership organisation, and it’s the global community of members that creates the Research Nexus together. Meeting our community locally is a highlight and an important learning experience. This year, we started by connecting with a growing community in Accra, Ghana - our first in-person event in the country included in our GEM program. From 14 members in 2023 to 31 in 2025, our community in Ghana is blooming.

At its core, Crossref Accra 2025 was about showing up for the community in Ghana - listening, learning, and building together. On the 20th of March, we welcomed 66 participants: journal editors, university staff, librarians, and researchers. People who are doing the real work of making scholarly publishing happen in the region.

Photo: Participants from across Ghana’s research and publishing landscape.

We started the day with a walkthrough of Crossref’s services, then shifted into more tailored conversations - talking metadata quality, improving discoverability, and making Crossref tools work for the local context. The panel featuring AJOL, WACREN, and CARLIGH was a key moment. We heard honest reflections about journal sustainability, the barriers to indexing, and how Open Access can grow if local infrastructure is supported. Each organisation shared how they’re working to strengthen research communities and where they see Crossref fitting into that bigger picture.

Photo: Crossref Ambassador Richard Lamptey moderates a panel with WACREN’s Effah Amponsah, CARLIGH’s Mac Anthony Cobblah, and AJOL’s Kylie van Zyl on sustaining journals and advancing Open Access in the region.

During the dedicated listening session, participants spoke candidly about the cost burden of APCs, the over-reliance on foreign journals for recognition, and the uphill battle local journals face, from limited resources to slow workflows. There was a clear push for stronger local publishing platforms and more training around tools like OJS. People want technical clarity: How does Crossref fit into their workflows? What’s involved in registering metadata and DOIs? What’s the actual value? Many also voiced interest in strengthening relationships with indexing services, and connecting university presses more directly with Crossref. The afternoon breakout sessions were hands-on. One group explored how to use the Participation Reports to check metadata completeness, while the other dove into using the Crossref API. People started swapping tips, asking questions, and brainstorming ways to improve how their institutions handle metadata. Several wanted to know how to automate more of their workflows through OJS, boost reference linking, and pull better reports from the Crossref system.

Photo: A collage of snapshots capturing activities at the Crossref Accra event.

Outside the main event, we also visited some of our members and stopped by the Association of African Universities. These visits gave us more time for deeper conversations about publishing workflows, ORCID uptake, metadata visibility, and the bigger picture of Open Access in Ghana. We heard a lot about the potential for more equitable partnerships and stronger local ownership of publishing infrastructure.

Post-event feedback made one thing clear: people want more opportunities to learn - more practical workshops, more guidance on using Crossref tools, and more support navigating the technical side of things. There’s growing interest in forming a local user group, a space to keep sharing, troubleshooting, and moving forward together. And the desire to improve indexing and visibility was a recurring theme. People see registering identifiers for content as an essential step on that journey. There’s also a broader concern about long-term sustainability and ethical publishing practices. Many journals are doing their best in tough conditions, and there’s a real appetite for honest conversations about quality, trust, and resilience.

Photo: Crossref staff and ambassadors with member Amy Asimah from Regional Maritime University. Pictured: Johanssen Obanda, Oumy Ndiaye, Evans Atoni, Patience Mbum, Audrey Kenni Nganmeni, Ginny Hendricks, and Richard Lamptey.

Crossref Accra 2025 reminded us how valuable these local gatherings are - not just for sharing tools and workflows, but for building lasting connections. We’re grateful to our Ambassadors and team who helped make it happen, and we’re committed to deepening our support across the region. There’s so much potential in Ghana’s scholarly community, and in West Africa more broadly, as we’ve seen again at WACREN in Senegal a couple of weeks later. We’re committed to working with local partners to help it grow.

A summary of our Annual Meeting

Rosa Morais Clark — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Crossref2024 annual meeting gathered our community for a packed agenda of updates, demos, and lively discussions on advancing our shared goals. The day was filled with insights and energy, from practical demos of Crossref’s latest API features to community reflections on the Research Nexus initiative and the Board elections.

Our Board elections are always the focal point of the Annual Meeting. We want to start reflecting on the day by congratulating our newly elected board members: Katharina Rieck from Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Lisa Schiff from California Digital Library, Aaron Wood from American Psychological Association, and Amanda Ward from Taylor and Francis, who will officially join (and re-join) in January 2025. Their diverse expertise and perspectives will undoubtedly bring fresh insights to Crossref’s ongoing mission.

The meeting started with a recap of our mission and priorities. Ed Pentz reiterated the Research Nexus vision of increasing transparency of the connections that make up the scholarly record and underpin the research ecosystem.

Crossref is dedicated to openness, community ownership, and a stable, accessible infrastructure that researchers, publishers, funders, and institutions can rely on for the long term. This is demonstrated by Crossref’s commitment to the the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI), which constitute commitments to building a resilient and transparent infrastructure for research—sustainability, community governance, and openness. Ed emphasized how Crossref is aligning with these principles and collaborates with other adopters to reflect and continuously align these with the needs of the scholarly community, with a public consultation on proposed revisions to POSI forthcoming next year.

Ginny Hendricks highlighted key membership and metadata trends. She noted that as of 2024, half of Crossref members are based in Asia. This year, as always in recent years, we saw many new organisations from Indonesia, Turkey, India, and Brazil join us. Removing those fast-growing countries for the chart’s clarity, we can see that some of the next most active countries are Pakistan, Mexico, Spain, Bangladesh, and Ecuador, among others.

There are now ~163 million open metadata records with Crossref DOIs, and Ginny pointed out increases in the registration of preprints, peer-review reports, and grants. In terms of metadata elements, it’s good to see that more publishers recognize the importance of including abstracts and ROR IDs in their metadata records. Also, in line with the community’s concerns about integrity, our members have been enriching their records with direct assertions of retractions.

Then, Ginny went on to report on the progress towards our strategic goals:

Contribute to an environment where the community identifies and co-creates solutions for broad benefit
A sustainable source of complete, open, and global scholarly metadata and relationships
Manage Crossref openly and sustainably, modernizing and making transparent all operations so that we are accountable to the communities that govern us.
Foster a strong team because reliable infrastructure needs committed people who contribute to and realize the vision and thrive in doing it.

Demos

Lena Stoll and Patrick Vale’s session gave members a practical preview of our latest tools.

Patrick started by reflecting on the challenge of making our identifiers useful for people using screen readers (and other assistive technologies). He thanked all who responded to our past consultation on the topic and presented the Crossref DOI Accessibility Enhancer – the browser plug-in initially available for Firefox (and soon also for Chrome). He shared the Gitlab repo for anyone interested in trying it and invited feedback as we’re hoping to iterate on this.

Patrick then went on to talk about our openness to community contributions to Crossref tools, with an example of the recent contribution from CWTS Leiden to our Participation Reports. Thanks to their work, our members can now see the proportion of works they’ve registered that include affiliation information and ROR IDs, alongside the previously available key metadata such as references, abstracts, ORCID iDs, funding information, or Crossmark.

Finally, Lena demonstrated the latest extension of our record management tool that’s just been made available to make manual registration of metadata records for journal articles easier. The new form is flexible and driven by our metadata schema. Importantly for our members, it simplifies the workflow with input validations and automated ISSN matching, and it enables members to register author affiliations with an integrated ROR look-up. We hope this will support our smaller members, who are relying on our helper tools to register their content.

Throughout the session, members were encouraged to use these tools and explore new resources available through Crossref. We believe that by taking advantage of these resources, you can enhance your research and publishing experience, and contribute to the growth and development of the scholarly community.

The discussion about open scholarly infrastructure

The panel on open scholarly infrastructure brought together experts with a wide range of experience in the field. Moderated by Lucy Ofiesh, Crossref’s Chief Operating Officer, the discussion featured six invited speakers who shared their insights on the opportunities and challenges facing the scholarly ecosystem: Ed Pentz, Crossref; Sarah Lippincott, Dryad; Amélie Church, Sorbonne University; Joanna Ball, DOAJ; Ann Li, Airiti; and Richard Bruce Lamptey, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

The panel talked about what openness in scholarly infrastructure means, why it’s important, its sustainability, and how to tackle challenges and gaps across the ecosystem. They highlighted frameworks like the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI), the Barcelona Declaration, and the FOREST Framework as key tools for guiding work on governance, sustainability, and equity. The discussion highlighted the need for more collaboration, inclusivity, and practical ways to ensure open infrastructure remains sustainable in the long run.

They also stressed how openness supports research integrity. How transparent systems allow researchers to question methods, verify findings, and preserve data. Amelie Church expanded on this point, underscoring the important role of open infrastructure in addressing challenges to integrity. She explained that such transparency enables the scholarly community to scrutinize research processes, ensuring the quality of outputs and their impact on society. Without openness, researchers face barriers to maintaining trust in their work, making open infrastructure necessary for research integrity and public confidence in science.

“By focusing on accessibility, transparency, and community engagement, open infrastructure can reshape academic and research ecosystems in transformative ways.” ~Richard Bruce Lamptey

Regarding sustainability, Sarah Lippincott stressed the importance of aligning funding models with community needs while addressing governance challenges. She pointed out that while initial funding can launch infrastructure, long-term sustainability requires consistent community investment and robust governance frameworks. This balance, she explained, is essential to ensure equity and transparency.

Collaboration was another important topic. Joanna Ball and Sarah Lippincott shared examples of how pooling expertise and resources—such as in the global support for ROR—can strengthen systems and make them more sustainable. These initiatives show the power of collective efforts in addressing technical and resource barriers. However, inclusivity remains an ongoing challenge.

The panel discussed the ways in which language barriers, resource limitations, and reliance on proprietary systems continue to exclude researchers from underrepresented regions. Ann Li highlighted how addressing these disparities is critical to ensuring the global accessibility of open infrastructure. By fostering inclusive practices, the scholarly community can mitigate biases and build tools that reflect a broader range of research contributions.

”My hope is that open infrastructure can have the resources that it needs to thrive, not just merely survive, and also that open infrastructure communities and organisations look to the value of frameworks that we’ve talked about today to help align themselves and improve their policies and practices, because there’s always room for growth, even in the best, most well-intentioned communities.” ~Sarah Lippincott, Dryad

The panel wrapped up the discussion by expressing optimism for the future of open scholarly infrastructure and emphasized the importance of continued investment, collaboration across organisations, and transparency in operations. The discussion reinforced the idea that open infrastructure provides a strong foundation for research that is equitable, sustainable, and accessible to all.

Updates from our Community

We enjoyed talks from our community about increasing their participation in the Research Nexus by adopting, using and enhancing metadata in different ways. Robbykha Rosalien hosted talks from the EuropePMC, Dutch Research Council, eLife, and CSIRO featured in Session I, and Amanda French hosted CLOCKSS, Sciety, and Redalyc in Session II.

Michael Parkin talked about preprints in Europe PMC. Europe PMC is a database for life science literature and a platform for content-based innovation. They started indexing preprints via Crossref REST API in 2018. Michael presented their work on discoverability of preprints in their database, including reflections on early challenges, as well as the latest efforts in surfacing available community reviews.

Hans de Jonge talked about the Dutch Research Council’s (NWO) dedication to open science, with policies ensuring that publications and data funded by NWO are openly available. They embrace open science principles for their own metadata and is a signatory of the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information. Hans focused on NWO’s recent introduction of Grant IDs through Crossref’s Grant Linking System (GLS). He shared their approach, the motivations behind introducing Grant IDs, and some challenges they faced.

Frederick Atherden explained how eLife, a nonprofit led by scientists, use Crossref’s Grant Linking System to include grant DOIs in their publication metadata. It allows authors to add grant DOIs during submission, and they developed a tool to match grant numbers with DOIs during the proofing process to improve accuracy. Their goal is to follow best practices for metadata, making content easier to find and link to.

Brietta Pike covered how CSIRO is working to improve metadata quality for its journals, making research more discoverable and trustworthy. CSIRO faced challenges like inconsistent XML tagging, outdated systems, and data loss. To address these, they formed a project team, created a clear XML stylesheet, and updated their workflows. Recent progress includes better funding data, clearer license information, and more complete affiliation tagging. These efforts aim to support a more transparent and accessible research environment.

Alicia Wise of CLOCKSS talked about recent collaborations seeking to safeguard our cultural and scholarly heritage over the long term. CLOCKSS, a community-run archive, is dedicated to preserving scholarly content to remain accessible and unchanged for future generations. True preservation requires securely storing content in trusted archives that are actively maintained. A group of librarians and publishers developed a guide to help publishers preserve content, they also established an archival standard for EPUB formats to ensure ebooks can be stored effectively, and launched a pilot project to track preserved books, helping libraries and scholars identify safely stored titles.

Mark Williams from Sciety talked about how Sciety uses Crossref metadata to create detailed preprint histories. By partnering with organisations and communities worldwide, Sciety platform gathers public reviews, highlights, and recommendations on preprinted research, helping researchers evaluate the quality and relevance of new studies. Through linking related preprints and journal articles, Sciety builds a connected view of each research work. Although challenges like inconsistent terminology and identifier gaps persist, these efforts enhance the visibility and credibility of preprints.

Arianna Becerril-García of AmeliCA/Redalyc shared insights on diamond open-access journals in Latin America. Redalyc is an open-access infrastructure that supports journals by providing free services like visibility and production tools. Redalyc has a role in sustaining Latin America’s unique approach to open-access publishing, where most journals are backed by academic institutions and public funds, allowing free access for both readers and authors. Arianna stressed the need to treat these journals as digital public goods and urged the communities they serve to help ensure their long-term sustainability. Despite limited resources and global under-recognition, these journals serve an international research audience, including authors from Europe, Africa, and Asia. Redalyc and other open infrastructures play a key role by offering tools that reduce production co-sts and improve discoverability, all without financial barriers. Noted was how this approach aligns with UNESCO’s open science framework, which promotes inclusivity and addresses long-standing inequalities in scholarly publishing.

Afternoon of more resources and updates from Crossref

After a mid-day break (in Europe), Luis Montilla kicked off the second session with a practical tutorial of Crossref’s REST API. Following his last year’s intro to the Crossref API, this time he offered a step-by-step guide to help attendees maximize the API’s capabilities for metadata retrieval with advice on:

Managing large data requests with pagination and iterations
Incorporating safety mechanisms - to avoid hitting rate limits, Luis recommended adding pauses between requests and sharing example scripts to streamline this.

For those interested in learning more, look at the new Crossref API Learning Hub— a new resource offering guides, scripts, and training materials to simplify complex queries. Please share questions about things you’re not sure about in our community forum, to help guide development of future demos.

Patricia Feeney followed with updates on metadata schema changes. She introduced our recent shift to integrate the Funder Registry with ROR, which allows members to use a single identifier system, simplifying data management by reducing redundancy. Patricia explained that, for now, the current identifiers remain valid, so members won’t need to make immediate changes. She also outlined planned support for version metadata, typed citations, and future plans to expand support for contributor role vocabularies, and invited community participation in a planned multilingual metadata working group.

Next, Kora Korzec offered an update on the progress in our research on Resourcing Crossref for Future Sustainability and opened up a discussion about the best ways of assessing our members’ size and ability to pay. In light of our ambition to streamline discounts, we also invited suggestions for discounts to support accessibility and fuller participation in the Research Nexus.

As part of the discussion, we’ve learned who was in attendance during the session:

We’ve heard a lot of support for our current GEM program. While it was clear from our poll that publishing revenue is not the most relevant measure of size or capacity for all those present – establishing a good alternative proved challenging. The idea of considering the size of the organisation as its largest entity has been discussed, and important points were raised about budgets in different types of distributed organisations (e.g., on the position of libraries within large universities).

The official Annual Meeting part commenced after the discussion, with a report on the State of Crossref from Lucy Ofiesh, and commenced with our Board election. Lucy highlighted some of the key accomplishments of the year so far, including:

Research for Resourcing Crossref for Future Sustainability (RCFS)
Integrity of the Scholarly Record (ISR)
Grant Linking System (GLS) reached 5 years
Automated some very manual membership processes
Released new form for journal article record registration
Upgraded Participation Reports to include Affiliations and ROR IDs
Launched a new API Learning Hub
Paused further development of a Relationships API
Migrated to a new open-source database
Schema development - ROR as Funder identifiers
REST API bug fixes and metadata consistency fixes.

Then she reflected on the membership growth––Crossref is now made up of 21,000 organisations from 160 countries. We reviewed our 2024 year-end financial forecast. As we’re bouncing back from COVID-19, our travel expenses have grown this year, and so have the fees for cloud services hosting. These are all as planned and happen in the context of healthy growth, including that from adoption and increased usage of paid services. We’re in a healthy financial position as membership revenue and usage fees, like content registration and Similarity Check document checking fees, continue to grow from the previous year.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for Crossref2024. This year’s meeting showcased our collective dedication to advancing open, accessible research infrastructure and underscored the power of collaboration in building a stronger scholarly community. As we reflect on the rich discussions and insights shared during the event, it’s clear our community is committed to advancing open and sustainable scholarly infrastructure.

Looking ahead, we’ll continue collaborating with members and partners to tackle challenges, expand accessibility, and foster collaboration. A key focus will be enhancing tools and metadata standards to serve the community better. Through innovative solutions and strategic initiatives like the Research Nexus, our collective efforts will make research more connected and accessible for all.

For anyone who couldn’t attend live, recordings are now available on our website. We’re excited to see how the ideas exchanged during this meeting spark progress across the scholarly ecosystem in the coming months.

Meet the candidates and vote in our 2024 Board elections

Lucy Ofiesh — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On behalf of the Nominating Committee, I’m pleased to share the slate of candidates for the 2024 board election.

Each year we do an open call for board interest. This year, the Nominating Committee received 53 submissions from members worldwide to fill four open board seats.

We maintain a balanced board of 8 large member seats and 8 small member seats. Size is determined based on the organisation’s membership tier (small members fall in the $0-$1,650 tiers and large members in the $3,900 - $50,000 tiers). We have two large member seats and two small member seats open for election in 2024.

We were pleased to see the diversity in candidates, with applicants from 24 countries. We also received three applications from research funders, which we specifically identified as a priority in the committee’s remit for this year. The committee was keen to prepare a diverse slate of organisation types, individual skills, and global representation.

The Nominating Committee presents the following slate.

The 2024 slate

Tier 1 candidates (electing two seats):

Katharina Rieck, Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
Lisa Schiff, California Digital Library
Ejaz Khan, Health Services Academy, Pakistan Journal of Public Health
Karthikeyan Ramalingam, MM Publishers

Tier 2 candidates (electing two seats):

Aaron Wood, American Psychological Association
Dan Shanahan, PLOS
Amanda Ward, Taylor and Francis

Please read the candidates’ statements

Every member has a vote

If your organisation is a voting member in good standing as of September 11th, 2024, you are eligible to vote.

The voting contact for your organisation will receive a ballot from eBallot, a third party election platform. You should receive your ballot by Wednesday, September 25th, and you will have until 15:00 UTC on October 29th to submit your ballot.

The election results will be announced at Crossref2024, our anual online meeting on October 29th, 2024.

If you have any questions about our election process, please contact me

Happy voting!

This year's call for expressions of interest to join our board

Lucy Ofiesh — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Crossref Nominating Committee is inviting expressions of interest to join the Board of Directors of Crossref for the term starting in January 2025. The committee will gather responses from those interested and create the slate of candidates that our membership will vote on in an election in September.

Expressions of interest will be due Monday, May 27th, 2024

This is an exciting time to join the board, as we have a number of active projects underway: We are considering resourcing Crossref for a sustainable future and board members will be part of deciding any changes to our fees scheme and overseeing its implementation. We’re focusing on how our community and metadata can contribute to ensuring the integrity of the scholarly record. We’re broadening our metadata record to capture richer funding and institutional affiliations. We’re working towards a future where the scholarly record prioritizes relationships between research outputs to build a holistic research nexus. The board helps guide this work.

About the board elections

This year, we will elect two of the larger member seats (membership tiers $3,900 and above) and two of the smaller member seats (membership tiers $1,650 and below). You don’t need to specify which seat you are applying for; we will provide that information to the nominating committee.

The online election will open in September, with results announced at the annual meeting on October 29th, 2024. New members will begin their term in January 2025.

About the Nominating Committee

2024 Nominating Committee

James Phillpotts*, Director of Content Transformation and Standards, Oxford University Press, committee chair
Oscar Donde*, Editor in Chief, Pan Africa Science Journal
Rose L’Huillier*, Senior Vice President Researcher Products, Elsevier
Ivy Mutambanengwe-Matanga, Chief Operating Officer, African Journals Online
Adam Sewell, Chief Technology Officer, IOP Publishing

(*) indicates Crossref board member

What is the committee looking for this year

Demonstrate a commitment to or understanding of our strategic agenda or the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure;
Have expertise that may be underrepresented on the board currently;
Hold senior/director-level positions in their organisations;
Have experience with governance or community involvement;
Represent member organisations that are active in the scholarly communications ecosystem;
Demonstrate metadata best practices as shown in the member’s participation report

The board is also encouraging Crossref members who are research funders to apply.

Board roles and responsibilities

Setting the strategic direction for the organisation;
Providing financial oversight; and
Approving new policies and services.

The board is representative of our membership base and guides the staff leadership team on trends affecting scholarly communications. The board sets strategic directions for the organisation while also providing oversight into policy changes and implementation. Board members have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure sound operations. They do this by attending board meetings as well as joining more specific board committees.

Who can apply to join the board?

What is expected of board members?

Board members attend four meetings each year that typically take place in January, March, July, and November. Meetings have taken place in a variety of international locations and travel support is provided when needed. January, March, and November board meetings are held virtually, and all committee meetings take place virtually. Each board member should sit on at least one Crossref committee. Care is taken to accommodate the wide range of time zones in which our board members live.

Board members are expected to be comfortable assuming the responsibilities listed above and to prepare and participate in board meeting discussions.

How to apply

Please click here to submit your expression of interest. We ask for a brief statement about how your organisation could enhance the our board and a brief personal statement about your interest and experience with Crossref.

Please contact me with any questions at lofiesh@crossref.org

Common views and questions about metadata across Africa

Johanssen Obanda — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This past year has been a captivating journey of immersion within the Crossref community, a mix of online interactions and meaningful in-person experiences. From the engaging Sustainability Research and Innovation Conference in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, to the impactful webinars conducted globally, this has been more than just a professional endeavour; it has been a personal exploration of collaboration, insights, and a shared commitment to pushing the boundaries of scholarly communication.

Working collaboratively with research funders and research organisations

Cocreation activity in smaller groups at the SRI conference.

The adventure began with a significant in-person event, the Sustainability Research and Innovation Conference. In the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, I had the honour of hosting a parallel co-creation session titled “Connecting Science to Society: A Network Approach to Improving Science Communication in the Global South.” The co-creation session addressed research discoverability and accessibility among early-career researchers. Apart from some immediate feedback from the researchers in the room about how they might use co-creation beyond the conference to improve their research experience and outcome, I also had conversations with research funders from the Belmont Forum, Future Earth, and National Research Foundation - South Africa and the National Research Foundation - Mozambique about connecting their grants and grantees with their published outputs referencing Crossref’s Open Funder Registry and research grants registration. A different side conversation was about a community organisation in Botswana that is interested in registering patents with Crossref for proper referencing and protecting the intellectual property of their research on the indigenous communities’ innovations and the associated published work. These conversations are ongoing, unveiling a new understanding of unique needs and opportunities to pursue with research funders and research organisations working on indigenous knowledge and innovations.

Learning from organisations in GEM-eligible countries

The journey extended globally through a series of webinars conducted in Bangladesh, Tanzania, Nepal, and Ghana. Collaborating with dedicated Ambassadors and my colleagues leading the Global Equitable Membership (GEM) program, we witnessed an increase in Crossref membership from the GEM countries and initial metadata registration. The GEM Program offers relief from both Crossref membership and Crossref content registration fees for organisations in the least economically advantaged countries in the world, based on the World Bank’s IDA list. Susan, in her blog post, “The GEM Program: Year One”, elaborated on the significance of these efforts and their impact on fostering equitable access to scholarly resources and communication through the expansion of Crossref’s membership base in underrepresented regions, such as Bangladesh, Tanzania, Nepal, and Ghana. Specific concerns encountered while presenting the GEM program included feedback expressing reservations about the program’s approach, particularly in deciding on eligible countries, and advocating eligibility for the program to be extended to all the non-GEM countries in Africa. Additionally, a conversation with some organisations brought up concerns regarding the program’s sustainability, with inquiries about whether GEM was merely a free trial or freemium service, and seeking assurances against future fees. The audience found these sessions helpful, acknowledging that joining fees were no longer going to be a barrier, yet questions about the program’s longevity brought out the need for sustained support.

Discussing how The Research Nexus can support the community

My journey then led me to Makerere University in Uganda for the Consortium of Uganda University Libraries (CUUL 2023) conference and the Forum for Open Research in MENA (FORM 2023) in Abu Dhabi. In Uganda, I noticed the synergy between university libraries, institutional repositories, and the research and education network service provider formed a consortium that played a crucial role in bridging the digital gap and supporting the adoption of open infrastructure. The event was mainly attended by librarians from different universities in Uganda. Most of those I connected with needed more information about Crossref and had questions about how Crossref DOIs are different from ARKs, which they commonly use in their publishing workflows. At FORM 2023, in my presentation titled, “The Research Nexus: A Rich and Reusable Open Network of Relationships in the Scholarly Record,” I shared Crossref’s vision for a connected research ecosystem with the audience that comprised of researchers, research administrators, and funders, and a good number of big publishers like IEEE and Taylor & Francis. The Research Nexus seeks to reveal relationships beyond persistent identifiers, utilising rich metadata to connect various scholarly components. I also took the opportunity at both events to share about The Publishers Learning And Community Exchange (PLACE), an online forum promoting best practices in scholarly publishing. The goal was to show attendees how they can actively contribute to and benefit from this vision, fostering a robust and interconnected research community through Crossref’s open infrastructure.

Photo with Dr. Salwan Abdulateef, rossref Ambassador - Iraq

I enjoyed the opportunity to join the National Open Science Dialogue by TCC Africa, which provided crucial insights, emphasising the need for assessing awareness, implementing comprehensive policies, and fostering collaboration around Open Science. Higher education institutions were recognized as influencers in the global Open Science movement, while a call for an inclusive research environment was underscored through open access and data sharing. The dialogue emphasized a collective effort involving policymakers, educators, researchers, and institutions, focusing on inclusivity and collaboration to advance Open Science in East Africa.

Exploring how rich metadata can provide trust signals with members in Kenya

Reflecting on the Crossref Nairobi event that happened in February 2024, it was an enriching experience exploring key issues shaping scholarly publishing in Kenya. The discussions also touched on the role of metadata as a trust signal and a tool for the persistence of the scholarly record, particularly in regions where data protection challenges persist. This is exemplified by concerns raised during the event about the fear of data theft, misuse, or loss, especially in places with comparatively weaker data protection laws. The presence of robust metadata, particularly with detailed provenance information, becomes crucial in such contexts, as it enables better identification and handling of potential misuse. Thus, through effective metadata implementation and the persistence facilitated by identifiers, the management of data risks can be significantly improved.

The insights from existing Crossref members pointed out contextual challenges, regional differences, and the importance of effective post-publication processes. The conference served as a valuable platform for dialogue, emphasising the collective commitment to continuous improvement of scholarly communication in the country, and the need for continuous awareness and training on making the most of Crossref services. The roundtable discussions during the Crossmark service consultation brought to light various reflections and considerations regarding post-publication changes in publishing workflows. The Crossmark service was a new discovery for most participants, with potential value recognized in facilitating current updates on articles. However, there are existing barriers such as a lack of awareness and technical expertise, suggesting the need for further education to facilitate adoption. Overall, the consultation provided a platform for introspection and exploration of avenues for improving post-publication practices in scholarly publishing.

Crossref Nairobi group photo

We organised the Crossref Nairobi event with the help of colleagues from the community team and local Ambassadors, Mercury Shitindo of Kenya, Baraka Ngussa of Tanzania and our Board Members in Kenya, Oscar Donde. It was the first time I saw both my colleagues and Ambassadors in action and working closely together - making presentations and accommodating last-minute facilitation changes to the program. Compared to attending or speaking at an event, organising one was a unique experience requiring a lot of planning in advance for logistics and the event program, identifying and keeping in touch with important stakeholders, ushering guests and being on standby for any matters that come up about the event. All of that went very well thanks to the team on the ground and cooperative participants.

Exploring the role of open infrastructure for African universities

Attending the recent WACREN 2024 conference was an eye-opening experience, unfolding the role of open infrastructure in addressing challenges faced by African universities. A focus on open access systems and advocacy for decolonizing knowledge were voiced too, including challenges of affordability of DOIs and questions of local ownership amidst global initiatives. Global persistent identifier providers, including ORCID and DataCite too, had a presence at the conference, alongside passionate advocates for more locally managed, decentralised infrastructure. These are concerns that Crossref needs to understand better, as we seek to find effective ways of supporting equitable participation in the Research Nexus. The conference resonated with a call for continued work in fostering accessibility, sharing, and leveraging resources to accelerate research and innovation in Africa.

Photo with our Ambassadors from West Africa at WACREN 2024 event: Blessing Abumere - Nigeria, Audrey Kenni Nganmeni - Cameroon, Richard Lamptey - Ghana and Oumy Ndiaye - Senegal.

Conversations with Crossref Ambassadors brought about a shared narrative across universities in some African countries. These institutions are actively embracing digital shifts, setting up institutional repositories using platforms like DSpace and OJS. However, challenges persist, particularly in funding and technical capacity. It’s heartening to see how national and regional research and education networks step in to help in internet connectivity, opening up collaboration opportunities with other interoperable infrastructure, setting up repositories, providing hosting services and event managing content identifiers.

Deceptive publishing practices remain a shared concern, and we’ve had requests at these meetings for stricter inclusion criteria for membership of Crossref to ensure quality and trustworthiness of articles accessible through Crossref metadata.

We’ve explained to those we’ve met that Crossref doesn’t (and can’t) assess the quality of content or the integrity of the research process. We don’t have the people or the skills, and it isn’t our mission to be the gatekeepers of research quality. A DOI record is just an indication that something was published, it isn’t an indication of quality.

However, we do still have a vital role in preserving the integrity of the scholarly record. We provide the infrastructure which enables those who produce scholarly outputs to provide metadata (effectively evidence) about how they ensure the quality of content and how the outputs fit into the scholarly record. The scholarly record - that network of published outputs, inputs, relationships and contexts - is captured through the metadata records that our members register with us, and that we then distribute freely and openly through our API. The richer and more comprehensive Crossref records are, the more context there is for our members and for the whole scholarly research ecosystem to make their own decisions around trustworthiness. Blocking access to the infrastructure creates gaps in the scholarly record, but also potentially blocks legitimate newcomers.

“Crossref is focused on enriching metadata to provide more and better trust signals while keeping barriers to membership and participation as low as possible to enable an inclusive scholarly record.” Read more about Crossref’s role in preserving the integrity of the Scholarly record in the blog post by Amanda Bartell.

While the landscape of digital scholarly publication witnesses significant strides, a crucial need persists, the importance of preserving and interconnecting metadata to the global scholarly record. It’s not just about discoverability, a theme resonating strongly within the community, but about enabling reproducibility, upholding research and editorial integrity, and facilitating reporting and assessment.

The path forward

As I reflect on this year of immersing myself within the Crossref community, building awareness in new communities, and learning more about the different perceptions across the region, it feels like a personal progression of growth and discovery. From the captivating in-person moments to the global webinars and collaborative efforts to address challenges in scholarly communication, this journey is not just a professional pursuit; it’s a personal exploration. The path forward involves continued support, intensified awareness-building, and sustained dialogue, ensuring that the scholarly ecosystem continues to thrive, evolve, and leave a lasting impact.

2023 board election slate

Lucy Ofiesh — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’m pleased to share the 2023 board election slate. Crossref’s Nominating Committee received 87 submissions from members worldwide to fill seven open board seats.

We maintain a balance of eight large member seats and eight small member seats. A member’s size is determined based on the membership fee tier they pay. We look at how our total revenue is generated across the membership tiers and split it down the middle. Like last year, about half of our revenue came from members in the tiers $0 - $1,650, and the other half came from members in tiers $3,900 - $50,000. We have two large member seats and five small member seats open for election in 2023.

The Nominating Committee presents the following slate.

The 2023 slate

Tier 1 candidates (electing five seats):

Beilstein-Institut, Wendy Patterson
Korean Council of Science Editors, Kihong Kim
Lujosh Ventures Limited, Olu Joshua
NISC Ltd, Mike Schramm
OpenEdition, Marin Dacos
Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Dr. Ivan Suazo
Vilnius University, Vincas Grigas

Tier 2 candidates (electing two seats):

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Scott Delman
Oxford University Press, James Phillpotts
Public Library of Science (PLOS), Dan Shanahan
University of Chicago Press, Ashley Towne

Here are the candidates’ organisational and personal statements

You can be part of this important process by voting in the election

If your organisation is a voting member in good standing of Crossref as of September 10th, 2023, you are eligible to vote when voting opens on September 27th, 2023.

How can you vote?

Your organisation’s designated voting contact will receive an email from eBallot the week of September 25th with the Formal Notice of Meeting and Proxy Form with concise instructions on how to vote. The email will include a username and password with a link to our voting platform.

The election results will be announced at the LIVE23 online meeting on October 31st, 2023. Save the date! Incoming members will take their seats at the March 2024 board meeting.

Our annual call for board nominations

Lucy Ofiesh — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Crossref Nominating Committee invites expressions of interest to join the Board of Directors of Crossref for the term starting in March 2024. The committee will gather responses from those interested and create the slate of candidates that our members will vote on in an election in September.

Expressions of interest will be due Monday, June 26th, 2023.

About the board elections

The board maintains a balance of seats, with eight seats for smaller members and eight seats for larger members (based on total revenue to Crossref). This is to ensure that the diversity of experiences and perspectives of the scholarly community are represented in decisions made at Crossref.

This year we will elect two of the larger member seats (membership tiers $3,900 and above) and five of the smaller member seats (membership tiers $1,650 and below). You don’t need to specify which seat you are applying for. We will provide that information to the nominating committee.

The election takes place online, and voting will open in September. Election results will be shared at the annual meeting on October 31st. New members will commence their term in March 2024.

About the Nominating Committee

2023 Nominating Committee:

Aaron Wood, American Psychological Association, chair*
Oscar Donde, Pan Africa Science Journal*
David Haber, American Society for Microbiology
Rose L’Huillier, Elsevier*
Marie Souliere, Frontiers

(*) indicates Crossref board member

What does the committee look for

demonstrate a commitment to or understanding of our strategic agenda or the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure;
have expertise that may be underrepresented on the board currently;
hold senior/director-level positions in their organisations;
have experience with governance or community involvement;
represent member organisations that are active in the scholarly communications ecosystem;
demonstrate metadata best practices as shown in the member’s participation report

Board roles and responsibilities

Crossref’s services provide a central infrastructure to scholarly communications. Crossref’s board helps shape the future of our services and, by extension, impacts the broader scholarly ecosystem. We are looking for board members to contribute their experience and perspective.

Setting the strategic direction for the organisation;
Providing financial oversight; and
Approving new policies and services.

The board is representative of our membership base and guides the staff leadership team on trends affecting scholarly communications. The board sets strategic directions for the organisation while also providing oversight into policy changes and implementation. Board members have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure sound operations. Board members do this by attending board meetings, as well as joining more specific board committees.

Who can apply to join the board?

What is expected of board members?

Board members attend three meetings each year that typically take place in March, July, and November. Meetings have taken place in various international locations, and travel support is provided when needed. March and November board meetings are held virtually, and all committee meetings take place virtually. Each board member should sit on at least one Crossref committee. Care is taken to accommodate the wide range of timezones in which our board members live.

While the expressions of interest are specific to an individual, the seat that is elected to the board belongs to the member organisation. The primary board member also names an alternate who may attend meetings if the primary board member cannot. There is no personal financial obligation to sit on the board. The member organisation must remain in good standing.

Board members are expected to be comfortable assuming the responsibilities listed above and to prepare and participate in board meeting discussions.

How to apply

Please click here to submit your expression of interest. We ask for a brief statement about how your organisation could enhance the Crossref board and a brief personal statement about your interest and experience with Crossref.

Please contact me with any questions at lofiesh@crossref.org

2022 Board Election

Lucy Ofiesh — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I’m pleased to share the 2022 board election slate. Crossref’s Nominating Committee received 40 submissions from members worldwide to fill five open board seats.

We maintain a balance of eight large member seats and eight small member seats. A member’s size is determined based on the membership fee tier they pay. We look at how our total revenue is generated across the membership tiers and split it down the middle. Like last year, about half of our revenue came from members in the tiers $0 - $1,650, and the other half came from members in tiers $3,900 - $50,000. We have four large member seats and one small member seat open for election in 2022.

The Nominating Committee presents the following slate.

The 2022 slate

Tier 1 candidates (electing one seat):

eLife, Damian Pattinson, Executive Director
Pan Africa Science Journal, Oscar Donde, Editor in Chief

Tier 2 candidates (electing four seats):

Clarivate, Christine Stohn, Director of Product Management
Elsevier, Rose L’Huillier, Senior Vice President Researcher Products
The MIT Press, Nick Lindsay, Journals and Open Access Director
Springer Nature, Anjalie Nawaratne, VP Data Transformation & Chief Business Architect
Wiley, Allyn Molina, Group Vice President, Research Publishing

Here are the candidates’ organisational and personal statements

You can be part of this important process by voting in the election

If your organisation is a voting member in good standing of Crossref as of September 6th, 2022, you are eligible to vote when voting opens on September 20th, 2022.

How can you vote?

Your organisation’s designated voting contact will receive an email the week of September 19th with the Formal Notice of Meeting and Proxy Form with concise instructions on how to vote. You will also receive a username and password with a link to our voting platform.

The election results will be announced at the LIVE22 online meeting on October 26th, 2022. Save the date! Incoming members will take their seats at the March 2023 board meeting.

Annual call for board nominations

Lucy Ofiesh — Tue, 31 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Crossref Nominating Committee is inviting expressions of interest to join the Board of Directors of Crossref for the term starting in March 2023. The committee will gather responses from those interested and create the slate of candidates that our membership will vote on in an election in September.

Expressions of interest will be due Friday, June 24th, 2022.

About the our board elections

The board maintains a balance of seats, with eight seats for smaller members and eight seats for larger members (based on total revenue to Crossref). This is in an effort to ensure that the diversity of experiences and perspectives of the scholarly community are represented in decisions made at Crossref.

This year we will elect four of the larger member seats (membership tiers $3,900 and above) and one of the smaller member seats (membership tiers $1,650 and below). You don’t need to specify which seat you are applying for. We will provide that information to the Nominating Committee.

The election takes place online and voting will open in September. Election results will be shared at the annual meeting in October. New members will commence their term in March 2023.

About the Nominating Committee

2022 Nominating Committee:

Abel Packer, SciELO, Brazil, chair*
Patrick Alexander, Penn State University Press, US
Nisha Doshi, Cambridge University Press, UK
Marc Hurlbert, Melanoma Research Alliance , US*
Kihong Kim, Korean Council of Science Editors, South Korea*

(*) indicates Crossref board member

What does the committee look for

The committee looks for skills and experience that will complement the rest of the board. Candidates from countries and regions that are not currently reflected on the board are strongly encouraged to apply. Successful candidates often demonstrate a commitment to or understanding of our strategic agenda or the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure; hold positions within their organisations that may be underrepresented on the board currently; and/or have experience with governance or community involvement. The Nominating Committee will also review the member organisation’s participation report.

Who can apply to join the board?

Board roles and responsibilities

Crossref’s services provide central infrastructure to scholarly communications. Crossref’s board helps shape the future of our services, and by extension, impacts the broader scholarly ecosystem. We are looking for board members to contribute their experience and perspective.

Setting the strategic direction for the organisation;
Providing financial oversight; and
Approving new policies and services.

The board is representative of our membership base and guides the staff leadership team on trends affecting scholarly communications. The board sets strategic directions for the organisation while also providing oversight into policy changes and implementation. Board members have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure sound operations. Board members do this by attending board meetings, as well as joining more specific board committees.

What is expected of board members?

Board members attend three meetings each year that typically take place in March, July, and November. Meetings have taken place in a variety of international locations and travel support is provided when needed. Following travel restrictions as a result of COVID-19, the board adopted a plan to convene at least one of the board meetings virtually each year and all committee meetings take place virtually. Most board members sit on at least one Crossref committee. Care is taken to accommodate the wide range of timezones in which our board members live.

While individuals apply to join the board, the seat that is elected to the board ultimately belongs to the member organisation. The primary board member also names an alternate who may attend meetings in the event that the primary board member is unable to. There is no personal financial obligation to sit on the board. The member organisation must remain in good standing.

Board members are expected to be comfortable assuming the responsibilities listed above and to prepare and participate in board meeting discussions.

How to apply

Please contact me with any questions at lofiesh@crossref.org

2021 Board Election

Lucy Ofiesh — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to share the 2021 board election slate. Crossref’s Nominating Committee received over 60 submissions from members worldwide to fill five open board seats. It was a fantastic group of applicants and showed the strength of our membership community.

There are five seats open for election (three small, two large), and the Nominating Committee presents the following slate.

The 2021 slate

Candidate organisations, in alphabetical order, for the Small category (three seats available):

California Digital Library, University of California, Lisa Schiff
Center for Open Science, Nici Pfeiffer
Melanoma Research Alliance, Kristen Mueller
Morressier, Sebastian Rose
NISC, Mike Schramm

Candidate organisations, in alphabetical order, for the Large category (two seats available):

AIP Publishing (AIP), Penelope Lewis
American Psychological Association (APA), Jasper Simons
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Scott Delman

Here are the candidates’ organisational and personal statements

You can be part of this important process by voting in the election

If your organisation is a voting member in good standing of Crossref as of September 20, 2021, you are eligible to vote when voting opens on September 29, 2021.

How can you vote?

On September 29, 2021, your organisation’s designated voting contact will receive an email with the Formal Notice of Meeting and Proxy Form with concise instructions on how to vote. You will also receive a user name and password with a link to our voting platform.

The election results will be announced at the LIVE21 online meeting on November 9, 2021. Save the date!

Calling all 24-hour (PID) party people!

Kathleen Luschek — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

While we wish we could be together in person to celebrate the fifth PIDapalooza, there’s an upside to moving it online: now everyone can participate in the universe’s best PID party! With 24 hours of non-stop PID programming, you’ll be able to come to the party no matter where you happen to be.

Send us your ideas for #PIDapalooza21

Now is your chance to share your work in the #PIDapalooza21 spotlight! We’re seeking proposals for short, interactive sessions about what you are doing––or want to do––with persistent identifiers and the communities that love and use them.

#PIDapalooza21 will feature sessions around the broad theme of PIDs and Open Research Infrastructure, focusing on the following areas:

Theme 1. PIDs 101

For PID beginners! You’ve got just 30 minutes to get attendees up to speed on a PID or PIDs. Make it fast! Make it fact-filled! Make it fun!

Theme 2. PID Communities International

Have you always wanted to host a Spanish-language PID session, or bring together PID people in the humanities? Tell us how you’d connect with PID peers around the world!

Theme 3. PID Success Stories

There’s nothing better than hearing about what’s working in the PID world––and why! Share your success stories so we can all benefit from them.

Theme 4. PID Party!

It wouldn’t be PIDapalooza without the party sessions, so be creative! Help us make this the best PID party ever!

Propose a session now!

The call for proposals will be open until October 30. Submit your PIDea now!

*Note: The PIDapalooza submission form uses Google. If you are unable to access Google Forms, email your session idea.

Get the full low-down on #PIDapalooza21 at the PIDapalooza website.

2020 Board Election

Lucy Ofiesh — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This year, Crossref’s Nominating Committee assumed the task of developing a slate of candidates to fill six open board seats. We are grateful that in the midst of a challenging year, we received over 70 expressions of interest from all around the world, a 40% increase from last year’s response. It was an extraordinary pool of applicants and a testament to the strength of our membership community.

There are six seats open for election (two large, four small), and the Nominating Committee is pleased to present the following slate.

The 2020 slate

Candidate organisations, in alphabetical order, for the Small category (four seats available):

Beilstein-Institut, Wendy Patterson
Korean Council of Science Editors, Kihong Kim
OpenEdition, Marin Dacos
Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), Abel Packer,
The University of Hong Kong, Jesse Xiao

Candidate organisations, in alphabetical order, for the Large category (two seats available):

AIP Publishing, Jason Wilde,
Oxford University Press, James Phillpotts,
Taylor & Francis, Liz Allen

Here are the candidates’ organisational and personal statements

You can be part of this important process, by voting in the election

If your organisation is a voting member in good standing of Crossref as of September 14, 2020, you are eligible to vote when voting opens on September 30, 2020.

How can you vote?

On September 30, 2020, your organisation’s designated voting contact will receive an email with the Formal Notice of Meeting and Proxy Form with concise instructions on how to vote. You will also receive a user name and password with a link to our voting platform.

The election results will be announced at LIVE20 virtual meeting on November 10, 2020.

Crossref at the Frankfurt Digital Book Fair

Rosa Morais Clark — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Frankfurt Book Fair (#FBM20) will be online this year since people are really not traveling right now. This special edition of #FBM20 will have an extensive digital program in which we will be participating. So you can hang out with us from anywhere in the world!

Similar to the in-person event of years past, members of our technical support, membership, and outreach teams will be on hand at our online Crossref Cafe.

Here are our Crossref Cafe hours:

	Support	Membership	Community outreach	Product
Wed 14 Oct 8:00 - 9:00 UTC	Paul	Sally	Vanessa	Bryan
Wed 14 Oct 14:00 - 15:00 UTC	Shayn	Anna	Susan	Sara
Thu 15 Oct 8:00 - 9:00 UTC	Paul	Laura	Vanessa	Martyn
Thu 15 Oct 14:00 - 15:00 UTC	Isaac, Shayn	Anna, Kathleen	Susan	Kirsty
Fri 16 Oct 8:00 - 9:00 UTC	Paul	Amanda	Vanessa, Rachael	Rakesh
Fri 16 Oct 14:00 - 15:00 UTC	Isaac, Shayn	Anna, Kathleen	Susan

Who will be online:

Susan, Vanessa, and Rachael can talk to you about our upcoming events.
Kirsty can talk to you about Crossmark.
Kathleen can explain Similarity Check.
Laura can show you how to use Metadata Manager for Content Registration.
Isaac, Shayn, and Paul can help troubleshoot any metadata, DOI, or reporting needs.
Sara can talk to you about content registration.
Anna will give you a ‘metadata health check’ including a tour of your Participation Report.
Rakesh can talk to you about product design.
Sally and Amanda can answer your questions about membership.
Martyn can talk to you about Cited-by.
Bryan can talk to you about recent updates to our products and services.

We are happy to schedule one-on-one virtual meetings as well.

Please do drop-in to say “Guten Tag”. We’re looking forward to seeing you online!

Community Outreach in 2020

Vanessa Fairhurst — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

2020 hasn’t been quite what any of us had imagined. The pandemic has meant big adjustments in terms of working; challenges for parents balancing childcare and professional lives; anxieties and tensions we never had before; the strain of potentially being away from co-workers, friends, and family for a prolonged period of time. Many have suffered job losses and around the world, many have sadly lost their lives to the virus.

I’ve been very fortunate that my family and friends remain in good health and very grateful to work for a supportive and caring organisation such as Crossref. I don’t usually work from home every day, so adjusting to the ‘new normal’ these last few months has been difficult at times. I certainly miss seeing my colleagues in the Oxford office day-to-day, and now have a new appreciation for the challenges our remote working members of staff face, particularly when it comes to feeling quite isolated at times. I’ve also learnt about the importance of good communication and building in greater flexibility to projects, especially when you are not able to see people face-to-face.

My role as Outreach Manager is all about people; it often involves organising and attending industry events as well as running our own educational days, which we call our Crossref LIVE events. The global health crisis brought the majority of international travel to an abrupt halt, something the environment may thank us for, but that also requires a dramatic reimagining of how we can effectively and empathetically engage with our members and the wider community.

As our planned in-person events have been postponed, for now, we converted our LIVE events into an online format, which we have so far run in Arabic, Spanish, Korean and Brazilian Portuguese with help from our Ambassadors and technical support team. We have had better attendance and engagement than we ever dreamed, with lots of thoughtful questions and positive feedback. While an online format has its limitations it also brings new opportunities, particularly by enabling us to reach many members who would not be able to attend a physical event. We have more in the works for the rest of the year, so keep a lookout on our webinar and events pages.

We have all had to adapt to new ways of living and working this year, but vital research continues to be done and new content continues to be published. We embrace new ways of engaging with our international membership so we can continue to support them in their roles and in working with our systems, despite the uncertain circumstances we find ourselves in.

Lessons learned:

Online events need to be much shorter than physical ones. Zoom fatigue is real, no one can stay focused for long periods of time at the screen.
Flexibility is key, running events in multiple languages and time-zones make them more accessible for a geographically diverse audience, but also ensuring recordings and other materials are readily available means people can engage with the content in their own time. And they do. Our Spanish LIVE on May 19 saw 335 people attend, and a further 304 (so far) watch the recording in their own time.
Don’t forget to build in time for breaks.
Although it’s impossible to replicate the natural human interaction that occurs at a physical event, an online format can still bring hearts as well as minds together. Break-out rooms, polls, and clever use of chat functionality all help to build engagement and turn a passive audience into active participants.
People love an online quiz.
Partner with others –– an interesting guest speaker can bring a whole new dynamic to your planned content.
Take the opportunity to be a little more experimental. We can’t do business as usual right now, so embrace new ideas and see what works!

Hoping you all stay safe and healthy, and that we can meet again in person in 2021.

Speaking, Traveling, Listening, Learning

Vanessa Fairhurst — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

2019 has been busy for the Community Outreach Team; our small sub-team travels far and wide, talking to members around the world to learn how we can better support the work they do. We run one-day LIVE local events alongside multi-language webinars, with the addition of a new Community Forum, to better support and communicate with our global membership.

This year we held a publisher workshop in London in collaboration with the British Library in February to talk about all things metadata and Open Access, before heading over to speak to members in Kyiv in March at the National Technical University of Ukraine. June saw our first ever non-English LIVE local event in Bogota held in collaboration with Biteca, and in an action-packed week in July, Rachael Lammey and myself jetted across to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok where we collaborated with Malaysian Ministry of Education, USIM, Chulalongkorn University, iGroup, and ORCID to run two events for our South-East Asian members.

Despite the varied locations, speakers and audiences at these events, some common themes emerged…

Language Matters

We currently work with member organisations in over 125 countries around the world, spanning an even greater number of languages. Whilst, at the moment at least, it is not possible to provide support across all these languages, we are improving support for non-native English speakers. We now have service videos, factsheets, and brochures available in 8 languages including: French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Bahasa Indonesia. As well as expanding our webinars to include a series in Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Arabic, Spanish and Turkish so far.

Our global team of 24 Ambassadors have been key in helping us to provide translated documentation, to run multi-lingual webinars and in-person events, and to answer questions from our members across languages and timezones. Our LIVE local event in Bogota, saw us run our first ever Spanish event with support from our Latin American ambassador team.

I know first hand how daunting public speaking can be, particularly in a second language. As a non-native Spanish speaker, the fear of being misunderstood or mis-pronouncing a word can be paralysing. Members come along to our events with a whole host of questions, sometimes preferring to come and speak to us one-on-one at the break or follow up with us after the event. Everyone has their own preferences, however, being able to communicate in the local language helps to break down barriers and boosts audience participation by taking away these added pressures.

Additionally after running a number of these events, one of the key things we have learnt is how much content to cover in a day. Our LIVE locals are free to attend and open to the whole community. This however can mean that we have a very varied audience in terms of technical know-how and experience of working with our systems. At first we attempted to cover all we could, addressing as many needs, questions and uses of Crossref metadata that we could. However, creating content to please everyone is often a recipe for disaster and information overload. If you start to see your attendee’s eyes glaze over or they start answering emails on their smartphones, you’ve lost them.

Instead we are now going to tailor our events a little more, asking registrants questions in advance, and selecting specific topics to cover. Having a good range of distinct topics and presenters, including local guest speakers, also helps to maintain momentum and avoid audience fatigue. Wider information and conversations will then continue on our Community Forum as well as events being supplemented by webinars in local languages and timezones.

Relationship status: It’s complicated

A question we are often asked when talking to members is how to link distinct content items in the metadata - whether this be a data-set to the published results, a preprint with the version of record, or a translated version of an article with the original. Linking these related research outputs is extremely important; researchers need to be able to cite the correct version of the work they have used in their research. Creating a network of these linkages between scholarly outputs also helps ourselves, our members, and the wider community better track how research is used and developed.

English is by far the most common language used in international academic journals and often is required for publication, however the article can be published in two or more languages, enabling greater discovery and use of the research. A frequent question we get asked is how to register the two versions, whether they use the same DOI or whether each should be assigned its own identifier. Our advice is that each version of the article should have it’s own DOI for citation reasons, but should be linked in the metadata of the translated version as in the xml example below:

However, our schema covers far more relationship types than purely translations. Another interesting area of discussion which has become increasingly prevalent in the last couple of years is around preprints. We began supporting the registration of preprints in November 2016, using their specific record type and enabling linking in the metadata to the version of record, providing a clear publication history for accurate citation. Today we have almost 150k registered in our system.

In Kyiv, we had a request to talk more about data citation; the importance of making data available and persistently linked to. Although data is often shared, it is not routinely referenced in the same way as journal articles or other publications, and this is something we want to encourage. When data is cited it provides clarity and context about the research underpinning the published article, as well as enabling greater discovery and re-use of that data in future research and publications. You can do this in two ways at Crossref, either by including data citations your reference lists, or, again, by using the relations section of the schema. If you want to learn more about the ‘how’ of data citation, we have some useful guidance you can take a look at.

As we are always saying Crossref is all about making connections. Linking research objects by capturing and declaring relationships within your metadata helps to map the evolution of research. Making the distinct parts of the research and publication process accessible by both readers and machines, enables wider discovery, re-use, transparency, accuracy of citations and provides greater acknowledgment of contributors.

Finding Solutions to Resolutions

Reports are rarely the things that get pulses racing (you should probably take a long, hard look at yourself if so) but they are important and can be very useful to make sure your content and the associated metadata is being registered correctly.

We often get questions from members who want to better understand their resolution reports. These are reports generated on a monthly basis for each DOI prefix, sent to the business contact for your organisation, which provide statistics on the resolution rates of your content. So what do we mean by a resolution? Well simply, when a reader clicks on a DOI link for an article, that counts as one DOI resolution. No information is captured about the user or where they are coming from. Although we work to filter out computer-generated usage, the numbers are not a precise measure of human click-throughs to a publishers website - cached articles, search engine crawlers, and traffic directed through a library link resolver can be included in these numbers. However, the reports still provide a good idea of traffic to your publications via the DOI.

Often the part of the report which is of particular interest is the resolution failure rate. Although in an ideal world this would be 0%, realistically 2-3% is the norm. Publishers who are new to Crossref or who have created a small number of DOIs may have a higher failure percentage and this isn’t necessarily a problem (for example, a publisher with 1 failure and 9 successes will have a 10% failure rate). A .csv file containing a list of all failed DOI resolution attempts for the month is attached to each report so that you can review any significant number of failures or any dramatic changes which may indicate a problem that needs to be solved.

Possible reasons for DOI failures:

Bad links - check that your DOI is directing readers to the correct location of your full text or landing page.
Undeposited DOIs - any DOIs that have been distributed or published should be deposited immediately. Simply adding a DOI to your content page will not automatically register this link.
Similarly, if your DOI was deposited mid-month and distributed earlier, any attempts prior to this date will appear as failures on your report.
User error - sometimes users can make mistakes when typing or copy-and-pasting DOIs. To minimize the risk of this keep your DOIs simple and short.

It is also important to make sure you keep the contact details we have on file for your organisation up to date. Otherwise you might miss out on receiving important information about your account. Where it is possible we ask members to submit at least three separate contacts and review this regularly as people often move within and between organisations. We want to keep in touch to give you helpful, essential and interesting information (no spam!)

Get involved

Our next LIVE local event will be held in Oakland, California on 19 September, registration is open and spaces are still available. Alternatively you might want to sign up to one of our interactive Metadata Manager webinars to learn how to use our new content registration tool. Our plans for 2020 are still in the inception phase and we welcome any interest in collaboration, you can contact us at feedback@crossref.org or send us a message on the Community Forum, where you can also keep up to date with our plans as well as giving us your feedback and suggestions. Speaking of feedback and, we have a survey which is trying to collect just that. Please let us know what you value about Crossref (and what you don’t) - we’d love to hear your thoughts.

2019 election slate

Lisa Hart Martin — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

2019 Board Election

The annual board election is a very important event for Crossref and its members. The board of directors, comprising 16 member organisations, governs Crossref, sets its strategic direction and makes sure that we fulfill our mission. Our members elect the board - its “one member one vote” - and we like to see as many members as possible voting. We are very pleased to announce the 2019 election slate - we have a great set of candidates and an update to the ByLaws addressing the composition of the slate to ensure that the board continues to be representative of our membership.

2019 Election Slate

Crossref received 52 expressions of interest this year through the link that was sent out via our blog, and over 100 emails from members interested in serving on our Board. It is very exciting to see that our members want to be involved.

In March of this year, the Board made a motion per the recommendation of an adhoc Governance Committee. It was resolves to “provide the following guidance to the Nominating Committee: To achieve balance between revenue tiers by proposing a 2019 slate consisting of one Revenue Tier 1 seat and four Revenue tier 2 seats, and a 2020 slate consisting of four Revenue Tier 1 seats and two Revenue Tier 2 seats; thereby resulting in, as nearly as practicable, an equal balance between board members representing Revenue Tier 1 and Revenue Tier 2 (as those terms are defined in Crossref’s ByLaws below).”

Section 2. Nominating Committee. The Board shall appoint a Nominating Committee of five (5) members, each of whom shall be either a Director or the designated representative of a member that is not represented on the Board, whose duty it shall be to nominate candidates for Directors to be elected at the next annual election. The Nominating Committee shall designate a slate of candidates for each election that is at least equal in number to the number of Directors to be elected at such election. Each such slate will be comprised such that, as nearly as practicable, one-half of the resulting Board shall be comprised of Directors designated by Members then representing Revenue Tier 1; and one-half of the resulting Board shall be comprised of Directors designated by Members then representing Revenue Tier 2. “Revenue Tier 1” means all consecutive membership dues categories, starting with the lowest dues category, that, when taken together, aggregate, as nearly as possible, to fifty percent (50%) of Crossref’s annual revenue. “Revenue Tier 2” means all membership dues categories above Revenue Tier 1. The Nominating Committee shall notify the Secretary in writing, at least twenty (20) days before the date of the annual meeting, of the names of such candidates, and the Secretary, except as herein otherwise provided, shall transmit a copy thereof to the last recorded address of each member of record simultaneously with the notice of the meeting.

The Committee and the Board has worked very hard to balance the Board, so you will see two categories on the ballot, large and small.

The 2019 slate includes: seven candidates for five available seats

Candidate organisations, in alphabetical order, for the Small category (1 seat available):

eLife, Melissa Harrison
The Royal Society, Stuart Taylor

Candidate organisations, in alphabetical order, for the Large category (4 seats available):

Clarivate Analytics, Nandita Quaderi
Elsevier, Chris Shillum
IOP, Graham McCann
Springer Nature, Reshma Shaikh
Wiley, Todd Toler

Take a look at the candidates’ organisational and personal statements

You can be part of this important process, by voting in the election

If your organisation is a voting member in good standing of Crossref as of September 13, 2019, you are eligible to vote when voting opens on September 27, 2019.

How can you vote?

On September 27, 2019, your organisation’s designated voting contact will receive an email with the Formal Notice of Meeting and Proxy Form with concise instructions on how to vote. You will also receive a user name and password with a link to our voting platform.

The election results will be announced at LIVE19 Amsterdam on November 13, 2019.

We'll be rocking your world again at PIDapalooza 2020

Ginny Hendricks — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The official countdown to PIDapalooza 2020 begins here! It’s 163 days to go till our flame-lighting opening ceremony at the fabulous Belem Cultural Center in Lisbon, Portugal. Your friendly neighborhood PIDapalooza Planning Committee—Helena Cousijn (DataCite), Maria Gould (CDL), Stephanie Harley (ORCID), Alice Meadows (ORCID), and I—are already hard at work making sure it’s the best one so far!

We have a shiny [new website](https://pidapalooza.org), with loads more information than before, including spotify playlists (please add your PID songs to [the 2020 one](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1oJtbpTzF9I3MewQ1Yasml?si=D0TKdR8BTJSL-GA3X_LwVQ)!), an instagram photo gallery, and of course registration information. Look out for updates there and on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/pidapalooza).

And, led by Helena, the Program Committee is starting its search for sessions that meet PIDapalooza’s goals of being PID-focused, fun, informative, and interactive. If you’ve a PID story to share, a PID practice to recommend, or a PID technology to launch, the Committee wants to hear from you. Please send them your ideas, using this form, by September 27. We aim to finalize the program by late October/early November.

Don’t forget to tie your proposal into one of the six festival themes:

Theme 1: Putting Principles into Practice

FAIR, Plan S, the 4 Cs; principles are everywhere. Do you have examples of how PIDs helped you put principles into practice? We’d love to hear your story!

Theme 2: PID Communities

We believe PIDs don’t work without community around them. We would like to hear from you about best practice among PID communities so we can learn from each other and spread the word even further!

Theme 3: PID Success Stories

We already know PIDs are great, but which strategies worked? Share your victories! Which strategies failed? Let’s turn these into success stories together!

Theme 4: Achieving Persistence through Sustainability

Persistence is a key part of PIDs, but there can’t be persistence without sustainability. Do you want to share how you sustain your PIDs or how PIDs help you with sustainability?

What would make heterogeneous PID systems ‘interoperate’ optimally? Would standardized metadata and APIs across PID types solve many of the problems, and if so, how would that be achieved? And what about the social aspects? How do we bridge the gaps between different stakeholder groups and communities?

Theme 6: PID Party!

You don’t just learn about PIDs through powerpoints. What about games? Interpretive dance? Get creative and let us know what kind of activity you’d like to organize at PIDapalooza this year!

PIDapalooza: the essentials

What? PIDapalooza 2020 - the open festival of persistent identifiers
When? 29-30 January 2020 (kickoff party the evening of January 28)
Where? Belem Cultural Center, Lisbon, Portugal (map)
Why? To think, talk, live persistent identifiers for two whole days with your fellow PID people, experts, and newcomers alike!

We hope you’re as excited about PIDapalooza 2020 as we are and we look forward to seeing you in Lisbon.

LIVE19, the strategy one: have your say

Ginny Hendricks — Sun, 11 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

With a smaller group than usual, we’re dedicating this year’s annual meeting to hear what you value about Crossref. Which initiatives would you put first and/or last? Where would you have us draw the line between mission and ambition? What is “core” for you? How could/should we adapt for the future in order to meet your needs?

Striving for balance

Different people want different things from us. As Aristotle said: “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” As we prepare for our 20th year of operation, please join this unique meeting to help shape the future of Crossref.

There won’t be any plenary talks about trends in scholarly communications, but instead workshop-style activities to help hone our strategy, do some scenario planning, and prioritize goals together, as a community.

Have your say

Whether you can make it in person or not, you can still pitch in by giving us your opinion in advance. We’re gathering broad input on what you think we’re doing well, whether we’re on the right track strategically, and how we can improve. There’s never been such a comprehensive study of what value we offer so we hope to learn a lot and will adjust plans based on the results.

Please take the “Value of Crossref” survey. It’ll take 10-12 minutes.

At the meeting

Please join us at the Tobacco Theater in central Amsterdam on the afternoon of 13th November from 12:30 pm and for the full day of 14th November. The first afternoon will involve some scene-setting talks with key information you’ll need for the following day’s workshops, including the results of the survey above. There will also be some announcements, including who members have voted onto our board (this year’s slate is yet to be communicated), and of course plenty of time for discussion and questions among peers.

In addition to the results of the survey, during the meeting each participant will be furnished with a ‘fact pack’ to reference in their discussions and recommendations. It will include answers to questions like who pays to keep Crossref sustainable?. I’m looking forward to busting some myths on that one! Everyone will be pre-assigned to a particular table/topic (like a wedding!) and will stay in those groups for roundtable discussions. There will be a community facilitator and a staff member on each table. You will be able to mingle more widely in the breaks and the evening drinks reception on the 13th.

Based on this provided data, we’ll be asking participants to think about key questions such as:

Who, ultimately, does Crossref serve?
What should Crossref’s product development priorities be?
What (if anything) would be missed if Crossref went away? (i.e. what’s our central value)
What does ‘community’ really mean and how should Crossref work to better balance opposing priorities?

Research is global, and supporting a diverse global community is a challenge. Come and have your say. Register today.

I can’t wait to see you there and hear your thoughts.

Myth busting in Mumbai

Vanessa Fairhurst — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In December, Crossref’s Head of Metadata, Patricia Feeney and I headed to Mumbai for our first ever LIVE local event in India, held in collaboration with Editage.

Crossref membership in India has escalated in recent years, with a fifth of its 500 members joining in 2017 alone. Around 40% of these new members are smaller organisations who joined through one of the eight sponsors we currently have in the country.

With such a large increase in membership numbers, it seemed timely to visit and meet both our new and longer-standing members face-to-face. Our LIVE local events provide a great opportunity for us to learn what challenges our members in the community face, so we can understand how to best meet their needs. It also gives us a chance to explain in detail how to benefit from the services we offer, as well as keep them informed about any future developments. A special thanks goes to Editage for all their help in organizing, promoting, and running this event with us.

The Mumbai event was held at the Sahara Star hotel and attended by participants from a range of organisations, with varying levels of knowledge about Crossref. Patricia talked about how to register your content and the importance of providing us with accurate and comprehensive metadata. She also introduced our new Metadata Manager tool, which many participants were excited to hear more about. I gave an overview of Crossref services, with a specific focus on Crossmark and Similarity Check. The afternoon session was run by Editage, and featured a session on ‘Helping journals and publishers to get closer to authors’, followed by a lively debate on research integrity. The debate brought up a number of interesting talking points, including how to attract more students into a career in research, issues around malpractice and plagiarism, and how to improve India’s research culture.

The Q&A part of the day highlighted a number of myths about Crossref that I thought would be worth detailing here, as other members may benefit from these explanations.

Myth #1: Crossref is a mark of publisher and content quality

We have a membership application process where we ask for different types of information and make it clear what the Crossref member obligations are. Crossref doesn’t assess the quality of its members’ content or verify members’ publication processes and procedures. It’s not our role or part of our mission to do these things. It’s important to remember that content with a Crossref DOI says nothing about the quality of the content, or that it is peer-reviewed or authoritative.

Myth #2: Crossref archives content

We store the metadata our members provide about a piece of content, not the content itself. Our metadata is openly available across our APIs and search interfaces. The same applies for access to the full-text. A DOI will take you to a landing page for a piece of content, but access to the full-text will depend upon the content owner’s publishing model.

Myth #3: Crossref provides impact factors

On publisher websites, you’ll sometimes see the number of times a paper has been cited in Crossref, Google Scholar, Web of Science, etc. The Crossref citation information is made available to publishers through our Cited-by service, but it is not an impact factor. Cited-by counts are based on the subset of Crossref’s members participating in that service, so they’ll probably differ from other sources. Crossref Cited-by counts are meant to complement other services rather than replace them.

Myth #4: Crossref charges to make updates or corrections to the metadata associated with a DOI

Not true - while you have to pay for your initial registration, any subsequent updates, corrections or additions you make to the metadata of a content item is free of charge (apart from Crossmark metadata). If you’re a member, we actively encourage you to update your metadata to ensure that your records are as comprehensive and accurate as possible. This helps the scholarly community find and use the content you publish.

Myth #5: Crossref charges for failed deposits

Only deposits which are successful will be counted. You will receive an error message if your metadata deposit has failed, so you are aware of any errors and can resubmit. If you’re not sure what has gone wrong, you can contact our support team.

Myth #6: You need to have separate prefixes to register different record/resource types

You can register all your record types under one prefix (and you don’t need to tell us if you start to do so).

Myth #7: DOI resolutions are how many DOIs you have registered

No. When someone clicks on a DOI link for an article, we count that as one DOI resolution. This is different than the number of unique DOIs you have registered with us. We’ll send you a resolution report once a month which provides details of your total number of resolutions, as well as DOIs which have been most frequently clicked, and any resolution failures. These failures can be an indication that you need to update your metadata with us for that particular article to ensure your DOI is directing readers to the correct webpage.

Myth #8: Crossref own the plagiarism software used in Similarity Check

The Similarity Check service is provided in collaboration with Turnitin who run the iThenticate text-comparison tool. The iThenticate database is the largest comparison database of full-text academic content in the world. Similarity Check participants enjoy cost-effective use of iThenticate because they contribute their own published content into Turnitin’s database. Turnitin also provides our members with access to additional features in iThenticate, such as enhanced text-matches within the document viewer and access to a dedicated Similarity Check support team in order to discuss any technical or billing queries.

It’s great to have the opportunity to do some myth-busting! You’re bound to have more questions, so we’ll be running more LIVE locals in 2019, as well as virtual events. To keep updated, follow us @CrossrefOrg, or subscribe to our newsletter.

LIVE18: Roaring attendees, incomplete zebras, and missing tablecloths

Rosa Morais Clark — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Running a smooth event is always the goal, but not always the case! No matter how well managed an event is, there is always a chance that things will not go according to plan. And so it was with LIVE18.

For the first day we were without the tablecloths we had ordered, which actually gave the room quite a nice, but unintentional, ‘rustic’ look. When they finally did arrive the following day, we realized we preferred the rustic look! Some of the merchandise we had prepared ended up sitting in Canadian Customs for a day and a half, which meant they arrived to us halfway through the first day of the event. Luckily attendees were distracted by the very cool ‘I heart metadata’ bags and didn’t seem to notice.

Unfortunately a significant number of registrants also had problems with Canadian regulations: they were denied visas to enter the country. Despite always trying to choose countries with international airport hubs and a welcoming policy, this was an unforseen blow.

But from setting up to take down, LIVE18 was truly a team effort. Even though many Crossref staff had traveled far and wide to get there, they all rallied to help the night before—hauling boxes through the streets of Toronto, stuffing attendee bags, hanging signage, and moving furniture around until 11:30 pm.

Because of these efforts—and despite the glitches—Crossref LIVE18 was a great success.

How good is your metadata?

That was the framing question at Crossref LIVE 18 in Toronto which this year focused on all things metadata. Over the course of the two-day event, we heard from guest speakers on the importance of collaboration, the significance of metadata to metrics, and what good metadata looks like. In our usual lively way, Crossref staff introduced a variety of new services, initiatives, and collaborations.

Crossref LIVE is helping surface key issues in the cleanup of metadata mismatch, after decades of the industry working in silos. I applaud Crossref for doing this. It’s great that we’re considering how to change the way we work and collaborate as an industry to make sure that we don’t run into metadata issues in this way again.

- Keynote speaker, Kristen Ratan, Co-Founder of the Collaborative Knowledge Foundation (Coko)

In her keynote speech, ‘Publishing Infrastructure: The Good, The Bad, and The Expensive’, Coko’s Kristen Ratan challenged the industry to rethink its slow, inefficient, and expensive resignation to infrastructure; and instead consider how a collaborative approach to sharing expertise in developing community-owned infrastructure could be faster, more flexible, and less costly.

View Kristen’s talk, The Good, The Bad, and The Expensive

The collaborations

Collaboration was a running theme at LIVE18. Geoffrey Bilder provided an overview of Crossref’s selective collaborations; DataCite’s Patricia Cruse introduced ROR, the community project to develop an open, sustainable, usable and unique identifier for every research organisation in the world—and she got the crowd really engaged at the beginning of her talk by encouraging us all to ROAR out loud!; Clare Dean and Ravit David sketched out the evolution of Metadata 2020, and Shelley Stall from the AGU introduced the ways they are urging the scientific community to adopt FAIR data principles (using her first data collection as an 11-year-old as an example!)

View Geoffrey’s talk, How Crossref (selectively) collaborates with others
View Patricia’s talk, ROR: The Research Oragnization Registry (Roar!) 🦁
View Clare and Ravit’s talk, Metadata 2020: This talk is sooo meta
View Shelley’s talk, My first data collection: Was it FAIR?

The solutions

Patricia Feeney, in the newly-created role of Head of Metadata, used a zebra to illustrate that not all of a publisher’s metadata is deposited with Crossref.
View Patricia’s talk, I am the boss of your Metadata (this one has the zebras) and also her talk on New resource/record types in the works at Crossref.

New tools

Jennifer Lin introduced Event Data, the new API that Crossref and DataCite have built together, enabling organisations to capture what happens to a DOI, including all of the places it is mentioned and links from/to. She also talked about Participation Reports, the new open dashboard to help members evaluate the completeness of their own metadata deposited with Crossref.

View Jennifer’s talks on Event Data, and Simplifying our services

The community

We also heard from the community. Paul Dlug from the American Physical Society boldly gave his view on ‘Why Crossref sucks’, and, with a view to helping Crossref improve in key areas, surfaced issues that members struggle with. Ed Pentz, Executive Director, provided an overview of the direction that Crossref is headed towards. Ginny Hendricks, Director of Member & Community Outreach, updated everyone on the expanding Crossref community and all the outreach activities her team conducts to engage them. Isaac Farley, new Technical Support Manager in the community team, told of his vision for moving to a more public, open, support model. Lisa Hart, Director of Finance & Operations announcing the results of our members votes in this year’s board election.

View Paul’s talk, Crossref sucks and how to cope!
View Ed’s talk, Our strategic direction
View Ginny’s talk, Expanding our constituencies
View Isaac’s talk, Open Support: From 1:1 to everyone

The perspectives

Guest speakers provided a range of fascinating perspectives from across scholarly communications. Graham Nott, who works with eLife, outlined how they were making their JATS to Crossref schema conversion tool openly available to the community for use. Jodi Schneider, Assistant Professor of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, gave us an in-depth look at problem citations, with a focus on retractions. Bianca Kramer from Utrecht University discussed Crossref metadata use in an open scholarly ecosystem. Stephanie Haustein from the University of Ottawa gave a researcher perspective on the problems with traditional journal metrics, and how they are dependent on metadata, which is essentially flawed. She outlined her efforts to increase metrics literacy, putting metrics in context with comprehensive metadata. Geoffrey Bilder talked about Dominika’s work to evaluate our reference matching, and finally closed the show discussing the role of metadata in creating a provenance infrastructure, providing trustworthiness which is essential to progress the scholarly research cycle.

View Graham’s talk, JATS at eLife
View Jodi’s talk, Trouble at The Academy: Problem Citations
View Bianca’s talk, DOIs for whom? Crossref metadata in an open scholarly ecosystem
View Stephanie’s talk, Good metadata + metrics literacy = better academia
View Geoffrey’s talks on Reference matching, and Metadata as a signal of trust.

As LIVE18 came to a close we took the opportunity to acknowledge and thank everyone once again for helping us reach the milestone of 100 million registered content items this September. Everyone took to the stage and waved their Crossref Bigger Ambitions flags.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the event. Please save the dates for LIVE19 in Europe on 13-14 November, 2019!

Ten more days 'til Toronto

Ginny Hendricks — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Our LIVE Annual Meeting is back in North America for the first time since 2015, and with just 10 days to go, there’s a lot going on in preparation. As you’d expect with a How good is your metadata? theme—the two-days will be entirely devoted to the subject of metadata—because it touches everything we do, and everything that publishers, hosting platforms, funders, researchers, and librarians do. Oh, and it’s actually super awesome too—and occasionally fun.

Metadata is what is used to describe the story of research: its origin, its contributors, its attention, and its relationships with other objects. The more machines start to do what humans cannot—parse millions of files through multiple views—the more we see what connections are missing, and the more we start to understand the opportunities that better metadata could offer.

We love metadata so much that we’re producing an 8-foot-high depiction of the ‘perfect’ record, in both XML and JSON, for people to gape at and annotate in person. Sneak preview:

The perfect metadata record is eight feet tall. SchemaSchemer

Both days feature plenary-style talks, insights from ourselves and guests who will regale us with tales of metadata woes and wonders.

Lisa will be there at the end of Day 1 to update everyone on some recent and potential governance changes, and—the reason we started these gatherings—to reveal the results of our 2018 board election, the second contested election we’ve held, and already with twice the voters from 2017.

Our amazing guest speakers are too brilliant and too experienced to highlight in just one blog. But check out the LIVE18 schedule to see what they’ll be talking about:

Patricia Cruse, DataCite
Ravit David, University of Toronto
Clare Dean, Metadata 2020
Paul Dlug, American Physical Society
Kristen Fisher Ratan, CoKo Foundation

Stefanie Haustein, University of Ottawa
Bianca Kramer, Utrecht University
Graham Nott, Freelance developer (eLife/JATS)
Jodi Schneider, University of Urbana-Champaign
Shelley Stall, American Geophysical Union

We’ll be taking over the entire second floor of the Toronto Reference Library, whose three rooms will house a bunch of conversational sessions as well as some more formal talks:

Rally is the main room where we’ll have the plenary-style talks, a corner for Unscheduled Maintenance offering live support for your questions about billing or tech for Ryan, Shayn, Isaac, Jason, Chuck, & Mike. Running down the whole left side of this room is also the You-are-Crossref wall where the community will showcase their work with metadata through posters - feel free to bring one along and find Patricia to get the sticky tack.
The LIVE Lounge is where you can eat, drink, rest, and chat and where you’ll likely find Rosa as she laises between the caterers, the venue, AV, and all of us. The Lounge is also where we’ll gather for much-needed post-election refreshments at the end of Tuesday.
The Bigger Ambitions Room is where a lot of the Unplugged sessions will take place. This room will feature three separate stations:
- R&D & Product where you can chat with Geoffrey, Esha, Jennifer L, Patrick, and Christine about your big ideas for us, and what we’re working on already.
- Metadata discussions and annotations of the perfect record (previewed above) with Patricia, together with space to ideate around metadata principles.
- Uses and users of metadata where Jennifer K will help us understand just how far Crossref metadata can reach, and who and what people are doing with it.

We cannot wait to show you what else we have planned :-)

For those of you not able to attend, recordings of the presentations will be made available on the event page directly soon after.

Otherwise - see you there!

Crossref LIVE Brazil evoked vibrant Q&A session

Susan Collins — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

There has been a steady increase in the growth of our membership in Latin America—and in Brazil in particular—over the past few years. We currently have more than 800 Brazil-based members; some as individual members, but most are sponsored by another organisation. As part of our LIVE Local program Chuck Koscher and I traveled to meet some of these members in Goiânia and Fortaleza, where we co-hosted events with Associação Brasileira de Editores Científicos do Brasil (ABEC Brasil)—one of our largest Sponsors.

These events always provide a great opportunity for us to update our members on new and upcoming Crossref developments. They are also an important way for us to discover more about the varied needs of our members’ communities and learn how we can work together better.

The LIVE Brazil events were attended by more than two hundred members and were held at the Universidade Federal de Goiás and the Universidade de Fortaleza respectively. Chuck and I enthusiastically demonstrated two new tools from Crossref— Participation Reports and Metadata Manager, we discussed our newest record types—preprints and peer review reports, and continually highlighted the importance (and the uses) of quality metadata.

We were joined by some fantastic guest speakers; Milton Shintaku from ABEC explained how to register content using the Crossref/OJS deposit plugin and Crossref ambassador, Edilson Damasio, spoke about Similarity Check and gave a demonstration of how to use the iThenticate interface when checking papers for originality.

The vibrant Q&A sessions reflected the varying needs of the audience. We talked generally about the different Crossref services and went more in-depth with discussions around submitting relationship metadata for peer review and preprints. Crossmark and its implementation was also a hot topic, as was how to benefit from Similarity Check—and in particular how to address cases of duplication in submitted manuscripts, and the setting up of plagiarism policies for each journal. There was also a lot of discussion around OJS integrations, and we were able to share that PKP/OJS is currently in the process of enhancing the Crossref/OJS integration, including the ability for publishers to deposit references.

We were also pleased to see so much interest in supplementing Crossref metadata with references, Similarity Check URLs, license information, etc. To address this we’re running a webinar in Brazilian Portuguese entitled: “Registering content and adding to your Crossref metadata in Portuguese” on 26th November. You can sign up here if you’d like to attend.

I’d like to thank Universidade Federal de Goiás and the Universidade de Fortaleza for hosting the events, providing the venues and the translation team, and of course, thanks to everyone who came!

A special mention of ABEC for their help in organizing and promoting the events. As a Sponsor, they relieve our team of an intense amount of technical support, billing, and other administrative burdens, saving us time and expense, while offering a localized service to Brazilian publishers.

Crossref staff with co-hosts ABEC and representatives from UFG who helped with the event - thank you!

Join us in Toronto this November for LIVE18

Christine Cormack Wood — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

LIVE18, your Crossref annual meeting, is fast approaching! We’re looking forward to welcoming everyone in Toronto, November 13-14.

This year’s theme “How good is your metadata?” centers around the definition and benefits of metadata completeness, and each half day will cover some element of the theme:

Day one, AM Defining good metadata
Day one, PM Improving metadata quality and completeness
Day two, AM What does good metadata enable?
Day two, PM Who is using our metadata and what are they doing with it?

Both days will be packed with a mixture of plenary and interactive sessions. Speakers include:

Patricia Cruse, DataCite
Kristen Fisher Ratan, CoKo Foundation
Stefanie Haustein, University of Ottawa
Bianca Kramer, Utrecht University
Shelley Stall, American Geophysical Union
Ravit David, University of Toronto Libraries
Graham Nott, Freelance developer of an eLife JATS conversion tool
Paul Dlug, American Physical Society

A ‘meet and mingle’ drinks reception will be held directly after the election results on day one.

About the theme—how good is your metadata?

The reach and usefulness of research outputs are only as good as how well they are described. Metadata is what is used to describe the story of research: its origin, its contributors, its attention, and its relationship with other objects.

The more machines start to do what humans cannot—parse millions of files through multiple views—the more we see what connections are missing, the more we start to understand the opportunities that better metadata can offer.

LIVE18 will focus this year entirely on the subject of metadata. It touches everything we do, and everything that publishers, hosting platforms, funders, researchers, and libraries do.

Come and join the discussions

Register to join us this 13 and 14 November, at the Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, Canada—we look forward to seeing you there.

Crossref at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2018

Amanda Bartell — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

How good is your metadata? Find out at the Frankfurt Book Fair…

At the Frankfurt Book Fair this year (Hall 4.2, Stand M82), the Crossref team will be on hand to give you a personal tour of our new Participation Reports tool. Or join us at The Education Stage to hear about how this new tool can help you view, evaluate and improve your metadata participation.

How good is your metadata? Join us Thursday 11th October at 15.30 at the Education Stage in Hall 4.2 to find out

Lots of reasons to visit our stand

We’ll be located in the same place as last year, Hall 4.2, Stand M82, and there are lots of reasons to visit us:

Get your metadata participation evaluated - Anna Tolwinska and Amanda Bartell will walk you through your own Participation Report and provide guidance on how to improve your results. Discover how complete your metadata is, where the gaps are, and how other publishers compare.

Discuss a technical issue that’s hindering your metadata participation (or any other technical issue) with Isaac Farley and Paul Davis from our Technical Support team.

Jennifer Kemp will also be around to answer all your metadata use and reuse questions. She’s looking forward to chatting with all kinds of service providers and toolmakers.

On the strategy side, Ginny Hendricks will be there on Wednesday 10th if you’d like to discuss any policy stuff, new ideas, or find out what Crossref is planning next.

Ask us anything

Not just Participation Reports—you can ask us about anything. Perhaps about our newer record types such as preprints, pending publications (i.e. DOIs on acceptance), or data citations. Or, ask us how you can:

Advance scholarly pursuits for the benefit of society, through Metadata 2020
Check papers for originality, with our service for editorial rigour, through Similarity Check
Discover where and how research is being discovered, through Event Data
Reveal who is citing your published papers and how platforms can display this information, with our Cited-by service
Provide evidence of trust in published outputs, revealing updates, corrections and retractions, through our Crossmark service

Let us know if you’d like to book in a meeting with one of us, or do just stop by the stand to say “Guten Tag”.

We look forward to seeing you there - bis dann!

Presenting PIDapalooza 2019

Christine Cormack Wood — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

PIDapalooza, the open festival of persistent identifiers is back and it’s better than ever. Mark your calendar for Dublin, Ireland, January 23-24, 2019 and send us your session ideas by September 21.

Yes, it’s back and – with your support – it’s going to be better than ever! The third annual PIDapalooza open festival of persistent identifiers will take place at the Griffith Conference Centre, Dublin, Ireland on January 23-24, 2019 - and we hope you’ll join us there!

Hosted, once again, by California Digital Library, Crossref, DataCite, and ORCID, PIDapalooza will follow the same format as past events – rapid-fire, interactive, 30-60 minute sessions (presentations, discussions, debates, brainstorms, etc.) presented on three stages – plus main stage attractions, which will be announced shortly. New for this year is an unconference track, as suggested by several attendees last time.

In the meantime, get those creative juices flowing and send us your session PIDeas! What would you like to talk about? Hear about? Learn about? What’s important for your organisation and your community and why? What’s working and what’s not? What’s needed and what’s missing? We want to hear from as many PID people as possible! Please use this form to send us your suggestions. The PIDapalooza Festival Committee will review all forms submitted by September 21, 2018 and decide on the lineup by mid-October.

As a reminder, the regular themes are:

PID myths: Are PIDs better in our minds than in reality? PID stands for Persistent IDentifier, but what does that mean and does such a thing exist?
PIDs forever - achieving persistence: So many factors affect persistence: mission, oversight, funding, succession, redundancy, governance. Is open infrastructure for scholarly communication the key to achieving persistence?
PIDs for emerging uses: Long-term identifiers are no longer just for digital objects. We have use cases for people, organisations, vocabulary terms, and more. What additional use cases are you working on?
Legacy PIDs: There are of thousands of venerable old identifier systems that people want to continue using and bring into the modern data citation ecosystem. How can we manage this effectively?
Bridging worlds: What would make heterogeneous PID systems ‘interoperate’ optimally? Would standardized metadata and APIs across PID types solve many of the problems, and if so, how would that be achieved? What about standardized link/relation types?
PIDagogy: It’s a challenge for those who provide PID services and tools to engage the wider community. How do you teach, learn, persuade, discuss, and improve adoption? What’s it mean to build a pedagogy for PIDs?
PID stories: Which strategies worked? Which strategies failed? Tell us your horror stories! Share your victories!
Kinds of persistence: What are the frontiers of ‘persistence’? We hear lots about fraud prevention with identifiers for scientific reproducibility, but what about data papers promoting PIDs for long-term access to reliably improving objects (software, pre-prints, datasets) or live data feeds?

We’ll be posting more information on the PIDapalooza website over the coming months, as well as keeping you updated on Twitter (@pidaplooza).

In the meantime, what are you waiting for!? Book your place now – and we also strongly recommend that you book your accommodation early as there are other big conferences in Dublin that week.

PIDapalooza, Dublin, Ireland, January 23-24, 2019 - it’s a date!

2018 election slate

Lisa Hart Martin — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

With Crossref developing and extending its services for members and other constituents at a rapid pace, it’s an exciting time to be on our board. We recieved 26 expressions of interest this year, so it seems our members are also excited about what they could help us achieve.

From these 26, the Nominating Committee has put forward the following slate.

The 2018 slate: seven candidates for five available seats

African Journals OnLine (AJOL), Susan Murray, South Africa
American Psychological Association (APA), Jasper Simons, USA
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Scott Delman, USA
California Digital Library (CDL), Catherine Mitchell, USA
Hindawi, Paul Peters, UK
Sage, Richard Fidczuk, USA
Wiley, Duncan Campbell, USA

Read the candidates’ organisational and personal statements

Candidates were chosen based on the following criteria:

Follow the guidance from the Board to provide a slate or seven or fewer.
Maintain the current balance of the board with respect to size of organisations.
Improve balance in other areas, with respect to gender and geography.
Also consider types of organisations and sector, as well as engagement with Crossref and its services.

You can be part of this important process, by voting in the election

If your organisation is a member of Crossref on September 14, 2018 you are eligible to vote when voting opens on September 28, 2018 (affiliates, however, are not eligible to vote).

How can you vote?

On September 28, 2018, your organisation’s designated voting contact will receive an email with a link to the formal Notice of Meeting and Proxy Form with concise instructions on how to vote. An additional email will be sent with a username and password along with a link to our online voting platform. It is important to make sure your voting contact is up-to-date.

Want to add your voice?

We are accepting independent nominations until November 7, 2018. organisations interested in standing as an independent candidate should contact me by this date with a list of ten other Crossref members that endorse their candidacy.

The election itself will be held at LIVE18 Toronto, our annual meeting, on 13 November 2018 in Canada. We hope you’ll be there to hear the results.

Crossref LIVE and local (to you)

Vanessa Fairhurst — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The last few months have been busy for the Crossref community outreach team. We’ve been out and about from Cape Town to Ulyanovsk—and many places in between—talking at ‘LIVE locals’ to members about all things metadata. Our LIVE locals are one-day events, held around the world—but local to you—that provide both deeper insight into Crossref, and information on our services and how to benefit from them. These events are always free to attend, and whether you are a long-established member, totally new, or not even a member at all, we welcome you all to join us.

At our most recent events we collaborated with some fantastic organisations and welcomed attendees from a variety of backgrounds including editors, publishers, service providers, researchers and other metadata users.

South Africa

In April Chuck Koscher, Director of Technology, and I travelled to South Africa for two LIVE locals, one in Pretoria and the other in Cape Town—and both in collaboration with the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf). ASSAf also provided two excellent speakers, Nadine Wubbeling (ASSAf) and Pierre de Villiers (AOSIS), who shared their experiences with Crossref and presented valuable insights into the work that they do.

Delivering events for a varied audience like this means there are often differing levels of knowledge and experience. So, to make sure everyone benefited from our sessions, we covered the different ways you can work with the Crossref deposit system as an XML pro, or an absolute beginner. This included a live demonstration of our new deposit tool Metadata Manager (currently in beta) which should help those less technically-minded people (like myself), and be a big improvement upon our current web deposit form.

|||

The day ended with a technical session, where attendees discussed specific issues they needed help with, which mainly focussed on retrieving metadata in the Crossref system, interpreting reports, and support with XML.

Images left to right: Dr. Pierre de Villiers talks about the Crossref Experience at AOSIS, and the stunning scenery of Table Mountain provided a nice backdrop to our Cape Town event.

Russia

Just back from a few days in Russia 🇷🇺. We ran a @CrossrefOrg LIVE local in Ulyanovsk for 60 editors, made plans to do more education and outreach in the region and caught a #FifaWorldCup2018 game... pic.twitter.com/GSdNEujJXa
— Rachael Lammey (@rachaellammey) June 22, 2018

The World Cup wasn’t the only big event in Russia last month. That’s right, we were there too—with our very first Russian LIVE local! On the 19th June, 60 attendees from a range of academic and publishing institutions joined us at The Ulyanovsk State Pedagogical University. Rachael Lammey and I introduced Crossref, the role of identifiers, and how to register different resource types with us. We also discussed the use and importance of providing accurate and comprehensive metadata, and shared some interesting use cases.

Guest speaker Professor Zinaida Kuznetsova talked about her experiences of working with Crossref and the benefits of being a member. This was complimented by a talk by fellow guest speaker Maxim Mitrofanov from Crossref sponsoring organisation, NEICON. Maxim explained how NEICON works with Crossref, and provide services for the smaller members they support. Maxim is also one of our Crossref Ambassadors - and he will be running more Russian webinars on our services in the near future, so look out for those listed on our webinar page!

We’d like to say a big thank you to the team at Ulyanovsk State Pedagogical University for their support and help with the event. Also thanks to our fantastic interpreters who helped us immensely by relaying the information to the audience in Russian, as well as helping to translate and answer questions.

Germany

Najko Jahn from Göttingen State and University Library talks about how he uses @CrossrefOrg metadata in his work #CRLIVEGermany pic.twitter.com/Y89ZkBMoSh
— Vanessa Fairhurst (@NessaFairhurst) June 27, 2018

One week later and we were in Hannover, Germany. Crossref’s Laura Wilkinson, Joe Wass and Jennifer Kemp joined me for this event, which was held in collaboration with the German National Library of Science and Technology (Technische Informationsbibliothek - TIB at their impressive venue in on the 27th June.

The day focused on all things metadata - how it can be used and why good metadata is important. This included taking a look at our new Participation Reports tool and a fascinating talk from guest speaker Najko Jahn from Göttingen State and University Library on the benefits of using Crossref metadata for libraries and scientists.

Datacite’s Britta Dreyer also spoke about how DataCite and Crossref support research data sharing, before Joe Wass and I presented updates to the collaborative Org ID project and Event Data service. The day concluded with us sharing more ways to participate in Crossref and other community initiatives.

Questions? Вопросов? Fragen?

Over the course of these events we were asked many questions—and here are some of the more interesting/common ones posed to the team:

Q. Do I have to join Crossref directly, or can I join as part of a group of smaller organisations?
A. You don’t have to be a direct member, you can join via a Sponsor. See our sponsors page for a list of Sponsors in your area, and for more information on becoming a Sponsor.

Q. Can I link translations of works together?
A. Yes, a journal article published in two languages can each be assigned its own DOI, and then linked in the metadata using the relationship type TranslationOf from our schema.

Q. Does the web deposit form support depositing abstracts and references?
A. No, it doesn’t. However, our new Metadata Manager tool does and if you are in interested in trying it out in beta, let us know.

Q. Can I share your new Participation Report tool with my colleagues?
A. Yes you can! It’s open and available for use, just come along and search for a member.

Q. Can I also register book chapters, dissertations and other record types under the same prefix?
A. Yes you can. You can register any of the different resource types we support under one prefix.

Q. Will you be doing more events in this region in future?
A. We hope so, and we are always happy to hear from those who wish to collaborate on future events, so just contact us to get involved.

SSP roadtrip for the Crossref team

Amanda Bartell — Wed, 30 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

What do you think of when you think of Chicago? Deep dish pizza? Art Deco architecture?

Well for one week only this year you can add scholarly publishing to the list as the #SSP2018 Conference comes to town. Some Crossref people are excited to be heading out for the conference, and we’re looking forward to meeting as many of our members as possible.

Come along to stand 212A and talk to Anna Tolwinska about Participation Reports. Although this new tool is still in beta, she’s giving SSP attendees a sneak peek and the chance to get an early look at whether they (and over 10 000 other members) are registering the ten key elements that add context and richness to the basic required metadata. You’ll get real insight into what metadata you’re registering, even if this work is done by a third party or other department.

Thinking about registering preprints or including data citations? Want to find out more about our forthcoming Event Data service? Our product director Jennifer Lin will be able to give you the ins and outs of all our latest services so do keep an eye out for her at the conference.

Speaking of third parties, I’ll will be popping along to the “Thinking the Unthinkable, or How to Prepare for a Platform Migration” pre meeting seminar on Wednesday with copies of our new Platform Migration Checklist and lots of hints and tips to help form a new platform migration guide which will help members have a smooth transition when thinking of moving providers.

Shayn Smulyan will be attending the ORCID breakfast meeting on Thursday morning, so come and say hello if you have any questions about how ORCID and Crossref work together. Shayn is one of our support specialists, so he’ll be able to help you with any other technical queries you may have.

Our tech director Chuck Koscher will be keen to hone in on members’ advanced questions about Content Registration, citation matching, and any and all schema deets. So seek him out if you have deep technical questions.

Want to find out more about Metadata 2020, the new campaign to improve metadata for research? Rosa Morais Clark will be able to give you the lowdown, and even better - she has stickers!

And don’t feel left out if you aren’t a member but work closely with Crossref. Jennifer Kemp will be on hand to answer all your metadata use and reuse questions, she’ll be looking forward to chatting with all kinds of service providers, platforms, and tools.

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

New Board Chair Paul Peters shares our mission

Ginny Hendricks — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

At the end of last year, Paul Peters—CEO of our member Hindawi—became the new Chair of the Crossref Board. The announcement was made in Singapore at our first LIVE Annual ever held in Asia. I caught up with Paul back in London, UK, where he answered a few questions about what he hopes to bring to the Board, and to the Crossref community as a whole.

1. Congratulations, Paul. How delighted were you to be voted in by your fellow board members, old and new?

That’s a rather leading question ;-)

Seriously though, I am incredibly honored to have been chosen to lead Crossref’s board at such an important point in the organisation’s development. The current composition of the board is as diverse as it has ever been, which is essential if the board is to represent Crossref’s global membership, as well as the wide range of business and publication models that our members use. This diversity on the board will help to support Crossref’s aim of encouraging innovation in scholarly communication by providing open infrastructure that benefits all researchers.

2. You’ve been on our board for nine years. How has it changed in that time and what should the board be most proud of?

When I first joined the board, Crossref was at the stage where you had successfully established persistent reference linking as a standard practice among scholarly journal publishers. And, although this was the original purpose of Crossref, it was by no means an easy task, as it required a diverse group of competing publishers to work together in building shared infrastructure for the common good.

In the nine years since then, I’ve seen Crossref continue to build on this core foundation of technological expertise, the trust and goodwill of its membership, and the diverse skills of its small staff. The result has been the development of important new services (such as Similarity Check) that have become an essential component of the scholarly communications system, support new record types (including both preprints and peer review reports) that are becoming increasingly important in the move towards an Open Science future, and the expansion of Crossref’s membership to include almost 10,000 members of all shapes and sizes from 114 countries around the world.

With regard to the board itself, I have been pleased to see Crossref undergo important changes that have provided greater transparency in the organisation’s governance, as well as more active participation from its members. Last year Crossref put out an open call to invite members to put themselves forward for consideration on the board. As a result of holding its first contested election, Crossref saw a dramatic increase in the engagement of members in the election process. Not only is this important for ensuring that the board is truly representative of the diverse membership, but it will also help to actively engage a larger pool of members in the important work that lies ahead.

3. What do you see as Crossref’s strengths and role?

I believe that Crossref’s past and future success relies on two key strengths. The first is its ability to bring together a large and disparate community of organisations and individuals to create tools and services that no single organisation could develop alone. People sometimes overlook how successful Crossref has been in building the trust and support of a diverse group of stakeholders, however I believe this has been an essential ingredient in the organisation’s success and will be essential as Crossref develops new tools and services in the years to come.

Crossref’s other core strength has been the expertise, passion, and ambitious vision of its staff, many of whom I have had the pleasure of knowing since my first days on the board. The ability to develop and maintain real-time infrastructure serving millions of end-users, while simultaneously developing new products and services, requires an incredible range of skills from technology and product development, to marketing, community outreach, and customer support. Moreover, as a growing non-profit organisation with thousands of members around the world, and an international staff working across national boundaries, Crossref’s legal, financial, and administrative support team have also been an essential ingredient in the organisation’s success.

4. We’ve grown beyond just the publisher constituency to libraries, scholars, and platforms and tools, which constituencies do you see us involving next?

Over time I believe that Crossref’s constituency will grow to cover all organisations that contribute to the creation and dissemination of scholarly research, although I recognize this may take several years to achieve.

In the short-term, I believe that research funders are the most important stakeholder group for Crossref to focus on, for the following reasons:

First, with the development of the open Funder Registry and the addition of structured funding data to the Crossref registry, Crossref has already become an important provider of open infrastructure for research funders.
Second, as the result of several key initiatives within the Open Science movement I believe that research funders will play an increasingly important role in determining how scholarly research outputs are created, shared, evaluated, and re-used. Therefore, the active involvement of research funders in Crossref’s membership and governance is essential.
Finally, I believe that there is an important opportunity for Crossref to enable a range of new services across the research lifecycle by providing persistent identifiers and structured metadata research grants. Given how critical grants are within the research process, I’m amazed by the lack of infrastructure to monitor, evaluate, and build upon grants as first-class research objects. In many cases there is minimal, if any, public information about the grants that have been awarded by a particular funder. Even in cases where such data is available, it is rarely structured in a way that enables it to be searched or analyzed across multiple funding agencies.

In the absence of a community-driven, non-profit organisation like Crossref to provide this infrastructure on an open basis, there is a risk that funders will be forced to rely on proprietary alternatives that limit how this information is used and by whom. Fortunately there are already efforts underway within Crossref to develop both the tools and the community of funders that will be required to create persistent identifiers and structured metadata for grants and other forms of research funding.

5. What are the biggest challenges facing Crossref?

I believe that Crossref’s greatest challenge will be to continue to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders, some of whom are regularly at odds with each other, in order to collaborate in developing tools and services for the benefit of the research community.

As challenging as it has been for Crossref to bring together competing publishers to build the shared services that we have all come to depend on, I believe that keeping the community focused towards a common goal will become even more challenging as that community expands to include funders, universities, and the many other organisations involved in the scholarly communications ecosystem. However, I think that Ed and his team have as good of a chance of succeeding as anyone could hope for, which is why I am so excited about Crossref’s future in the years ahead.

6. How will things change with you as Chair? You’ll be busier I guess. But enough about you already, what can we expect as staff and Board?

As my first order of business I’ll be getting rid of Crossref’s corporate jet, lavish office spaces, and executive chef. </sarcasm>.

On a more serious note, my hope is that as Chair I will be able to work with the other members of the board in supporting Crossref’s staff as they work to achieve the ambitious goals we have set out during the past year. I believe that Crossref’s board members and staff are aligned in the desire to significantly expand the range of services Crossref provides, as well as the communities it serves.

The board still has an important role to play in shaping the organisation’s strategic vision, while giving staff ample space to execute on this vision. Said another way, I hope to enable some lively strategic conversations among the board while making sure that we don’t get in the way of Ed and his team once it’s time to put ideas into action.

On a more personal note, I hope to be a good sounding board for Ed on any issues that he faces, either internally or externally, on the road ahead. Given my own experience in leading a growing organisation through a period of significant change, I know how important it can be to have someone to talk to when difficult challenges arise, which they inevitably will. I hope that I can be a good advisor—and also a good friend—to Ed as he leads Crossref into the exciting future that lies ahead.

Ginny: Thanks, Paul. I know Ed will miss his personal chef… but we look forward to working with you too!

Crossref LIVE in Tokyo

Rachael Lammey — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

What better way to start our program of LIVE locals in 2018 than with a trip to Japan? With the added advantage of it being Valentine’s Day, it seemed a good excuse to share our love of metadata with a group who feel the same way!

We’ve worked closely with the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) since 2002, and were delighted when they agreed to collaborate with us on a LIVE event at their offices in Tokyo.

With help from the team at JST, we welcomed around 80 attendees—a mix of editors, publishers and enthusiastic metadata users—who all enjoyed the talks from our guest speakers, Nobuko Miyari from ORCID, Ritsuko Nakajima from JST and Tatsuji Tomioka from Kyoto University Library (who talked about the use of DOIs and metadata in their research information repository, named KURENAI).

Vanessa Fairhurst and I also took part in the days program and talked about the different services that Crossref offers. With many of our members in Japan already well-versed in DOIs, we placed the focus of our sessions around the importance of accurate, complete metadata, and new record types (such as peer reviews and preprints). We also discussed our new community initiatives such as the OI project, identifiers for grants and Metadata2020.

We’d like to say a big thank you to Kentaro Kinoshita from JST for his help with organizing the event. We’d also like to thank the excellent team of translators who assisted us greatly by relaying the content to the audience in Japanese—being able to offer information and take questions in English and Japanese was an invaluable part of the day.

Any questions?

One day is never quite enough to cover all things Crossref, so we were happy to answer questions from the enthusiastic audience:

What metadata is required to register peer review reports with Crossref?
To answer this we pointed them to this informative blog on peer reviews.

How can I find information on using your REST API?
This is a great starting point, and most information can be found here https://api-crossref-org.pluma.sjfc.edu

Is the forthcoming Metadata Manager tool something I can use?
Yes! We hope it will make it much easier for you to deposit good metadata—and if you are in interested in participating in our open beta, let us know.

We’re looking forward to continuing to collaborate with JST, and are really grateful for their help in working with us to make the event go so smoothly. Thank you to those who joined us, and we hope to see you again soon.

Working with universities at Crossref LIVE Yogyakarta

Rachael Lammey — Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Following on from our LIVE Annual Meeting in Singapore, my colleague, Susan Collins, and I held a local LIVE event in Yogyakarta thanks to support from Universitas Ahmad Dahlan (UAD), Universitas Muhammadiyah Sidoarjo and one of Crossref’s new Sponsoring Affiliates, Relawan Jurnal Indonesia.

Over the past two years, we’ve seen accelerated growth in our membership in Asia Pacific (making up a quarter of all new members in the last two years). A lot of those new members have come from Indonesia, so it was great to have the opportunity to meet up, answer questions and to share knowledge between all our different organisations.

We welcomed speakers such as Dr. Muhammad Dimyati, from the Directorate General of Strengthening for Research and Development, Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education. Dr. Dimyati talked about the importance of Indonesian research and presented statistics on its growth, but also its coverage in different databases like Scopus and DOAJ.

Dr. Lukman from LIPI, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences also joined us to explain the importance of identifiers within the research ecosystem. As any identifier buff will know, we’re keen to talk more about how organisations are using Crossref metadata and identifiers, and the importance of providing good, complete metadata (Metadata2020) so this, plus a remote presentation from Nobuko Miyari from ORCID helped provide great context for the day.

Metadata and identifiers are of course just one part of the process, and Mr. Tole Sutikno from UAD gave an overview of good practice publishing by looking at some of the wider issues that journal editors (and researchers) need to know.

We had time in the afternoon to talk to our audience about Crossref - our different services, OJS integrations, funding data and our APIs, and thanks to our moderators we were able to take lots of questions from members who had specific questions about Crossmark, Cited-by and depositing references.

A few weeks later, and I’m still absorbing all of the things that happened on our (too) quick trip to Yogyakarta.

Thanks again to our members and hosts for attending the event and sharing their questions, ideas and plans with us, and we plan to come back to continue to build on these in future.

The PIDapalooza lineup is out; come rock out with us at the open festival of persistent identifiers

Ginny Hendricks — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

PIDs’R’Us and if they’re you, too, please join us for the second PIDapalooza, in Girona, Spain on January 23-24, for a two-day celebration of persistent identifiers.

Together, we will achieve the incredible - make a meeting about persistent identifiers and networked research fun! Brought to you by California Digital Library, Crossref, DataCite, and ORCID, this year’s sessions are organized around eight themes:

PID myths
Achieving persistence
PIDs for emerging uses
Legacy PIDs
Bridging worlds
PIDagogy
PID stories
Kinds of persistence

The program is now final and there really is something for everyone (well, every PID geek)

Hmm, Do Researchers Need to Care about PID Systems? Excellent question.
We’ll hear Stories from the PID Roadies: Scholix.
Nevermind the The Bollockschain and other PID Hallucinations.
An intriguing session on #ResInfoCitizenshipIs?.
There will be a plenary by Johanna McEntyre on As a biologist I want to reuse and remix data so that I can do my research.
And we’ll enjoy another plenary from Melissa Haendel (title to be confirmed).

With half the places already booked, now’s the time to register and plan your trip. We hope to see fellow festival-goers there for some PIDtastic party time (and actually some epic serious conversations).

Contact me via the steering committee at PIDapalooza@datacite.org with any questions, music requests, or backstage passes.

Full lineup

View the Crossref LIVE17 agenda.

What happened at last month's LIVE local in London

Vanessa Fairhurst — Sun, 22 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

So much has happened since we held LIVE16 (our annual meeting) in London last year that we wanted to check-in with our UK community and share the year’s developments around our tools, teams and services ahead of LIVE17 next month in Singapore.

And so, on 26th September we held a half-day ‘LIVE local’, covering a wide range of strategic topics, well-attended by a diverse representation of our UK community of publishers, funders, researchers, and tool-makers.

What we discussed on the day:

Ed Pentz, Crossref’s Executive Director, kicked the day off with ‘What’s new at Crossref’
Geoffrey Bilder, Strategic Director, talked us through ‘Crossref’s Strategic Initiatives’
Ginny Hendricks, Director of Member and Community Outreach introduced ‘Metadata 2020’
Rachael Lammey, Head of International Outreach discussed the ‘Global reach of Crossref metadata’
Jure Triglav from Coko Foundation presented some interesting ‘Metadata Use Case Studies’
Jennifer Lin, Director of Product Management, spoke about Crossref’s ‘New Product Developments’
Ed Pentz concluded the day leading a discussion on ‘Crossref’s Future Direction’

This event was one in a series of smaller, regional events which aim to better cater to our global membership and provide a tailored program of activities. You can read more about this series of events on our LIVE locals page, and if you are interested in hosting an event near you or have suggestions for one in your region then please contact me to get involved.

Crossref at the Frankfurt Book Fair

Christine Cormack Wood — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’ll be at booth M82 in the Hotspot area of Hall 4.2 and would love to meet with you. Let us know if you’re interested in chatting with one of us - about anything at all.

Kirsty Meddings, Product Manager: Here to help with Crossref services such as Crossmark and funding data, and happy to talk about your metadata and how you can deposit more.

Paul Davis, Support Specialist: Any issues with metadata deposit, or anything technical, I’m your man.

Susan Collins, Publisher Outreach Manager: If you’re a member and have questions about how things are going, or try out additional services, I can help.

Jennifer Kemp, Affiliate Outreach Manager: Come to me if you want to get Metadata from Crossref, or discuss our imminent new service for social mentions and data links: Event Data (in Beta).

Ginny Hendricks, Member & Community Outreach Director: I’d love to talk to publishers and platforms about the new Metadata 2020 initiative.

Amanda Bartell, Head of Member Experience: This will be my first day at Crossref! If there is something you’d like the Membership team to do or change, please let me know.

Chrissie Cormack-Wood, Head of Marketing Communications: I’ll be acting as “host” so ask me anything about our booth and activities at the Fair. Ideas for joint campaigns or co-promotion are welcome too.

If some of these topics are on your agenda, or if you’re not sure who to contact, please let me know and I’ll set up a 30-minute meeting at our booth, M82 in Hall 4.2.

And, if you don’t get a chance to visit us at our stand, make sure you don’t miss Ginny’s Metadata 20/20 talk at 2.30pm on Wednesday 11th, at the Hot Spot stage in the corner of Hall 4.2, area N99.

We hope you have a great Book Fair!

PIDapalooza is back and wants your PID stories

Ginny Hendricks — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Now in its second year, this “open festival of persistent identifiers” brings together people from all walks of life who have something to say about PIDs. If you work with them, develop with them, measure or manage them, let us know your PID adventures, pitfalls, and plans by submitting a talk by September 18. It’ll be in Girona, Spain, January 23-24, 2018.

One of the great strengths of last year’s PIDapalooza was the number of people who spoke and all the conversations that were kindled. So if you’re thinking of going, we encourage you to propose a talk, so we can hear what you’re working on and you can get some feedback.

At the inaugural PIDapalooza event Crossref took to the stage twice, with Ed Pentz covering Org IDs and Joe Wass talking about Event Data.

Here we have Joe’s memories of the event and Ed’s update on the Org ID status.

Joe Wass reflects:

At Crossref, the subject of Persistent Identifiers is something we care deeply about, and linking between DOIs, ORCID iDs and other identifiers is the reason we get up in the morning. But a whole conference dedicated to them? If I’m honest, the first time I heard about PIDapalooza I thought the subject was rather niche.

How wrong I was. It turns out there are people from all walks of life who care about “things” using persistent identifiers to link, describe and reference them. There was a great balance between presenters and attendees, and the programme meant that lots of people had a chance to speak. We heard about identifiers for research vessels, pieces of scientific equipment, individual bottles of milk, plus the usual subjects like scholarly publishing, datasets, organisations and funders, and how to cite them.

Between sessions we chatted over a wide range of subjects, noted similarities between subject areas, offered advice and exchanged ideas. Who knew this stuff was all related?

Ed Pentz on plans for the new organisation IDs

An important presentation at the 2016 PIDapalooza meeting was on organisation identifiers. A week before the conference Crossref, DataCite and ORCID released three documents for public comment outlining a proposed way forward. The goal is launch and sustain an open, independent, non-profit organisation identifier registry to facilitate the disambiguation of researcher affiliations. At the packed PIDapalooza session Crossref, DataCite and ORCID gave an update on their work over the previous year and their proposals going forward.

There was a lively discussion and debate about the issues. Following the meeting the three organisations set up the OI Project Working Group with a broad group of stakeholders. The group has been meeting over the last year and will release two documents next week - a set of Governance Recommendations and Product Principles and Recommendations for community feedback. So watch this space.

The PIDapalooza conference really helped galvanize the work in this area by bringing together a broad range of people interested in persistent identifiers. If you have an idea about PIDs, please come and tell us about it.

Check out the decks from last year's talks, the PIDapalooza website with all the info, and sumbit a proposal for your talk before September 18.

LIVE17 in Singapore is taking shape!

Ginny Hendricks — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Our annual meeting on 14th and 15th November, LIVE17 is shaping up nicely with an exciting line-up of respected speakers talking around the theme of “Metadata + Infrastructure + Relations = Context”, with each half day covering some element of the main theme.

Day one, AM: Metadata enables connections
Day one, PM: How research and infrastructure is changing
Day two, AM: Social challenges in the scholarly community
Day two, PM: Who is using your metadata and what are they doing with it?

This years updated format means both days will be packed with a mixture of plenary and breakout sessions and interactive activities. A cocktail reception with entertainment will be held in the Grand Marquee on the first evening.

A comprehensive agenda of the two-day event will be available shortly, but in the meantime we’ve provided a few talk teasers from six of our plenary speakers to whet your appetite:

Speaker	Title and organisation	Talk title
Theodora Bloom	Executive Editor, The BMJ	Preparing to handle dynamic scholarly content: Are we ready?
Casey Green	Assistant Professor, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania	Research and literature parasites in a culture of sharing.
Leonid Teytelman	Co-founder and CEO, Protocols.io	A call to reduce random collisions with information; we can automatically connect scientists to the knowledge that they need.
Nicholas Bailey	Data Science Team, Royal Society of Chemistry	What does data science tell us about social challenges in scholarly publishing?
Miguel Escobar Varela	Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies, National University of Singapore	Digital Humanities in Singapore: some thoughts for the future.
Kuansan Wang	Managing Director, Microsoft Research Outreach	Democratize access to scholarly knowledge with AI.

Theodora Bloom - Preparing to handle dynamic scholarly content: Are we ready?

Historically, journals might expect a few ‘Letters to the Editor" to discuss ‘matters arising’ after an article was published. But scholarly communications are becoming much more dynamic, with versions posted as ‘preprints’ before publication, corrections after publication, and potentially multiple versions of the same study appearing at different times. How should we handle this changing landscape for the benefits of researchers and consumers of the literature?

About Theodora Bloom

Theodora Bloom has been executive editor of The BMJ since June 2014. She has a PhD in developmental cell biology from the University of Cambridge and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. She moved into publishing as an editor on the biology team at Nature, and in 1992 joined the fledgling journal Current Biology. After a number of years helping to develop Current Biology and its siblings Structure and Chemistry & Biology, Theo joined the beginnings of the open access movement. As the founding editor of Genome Biology she was closely involved in the birth of the commercial open access publisher BioMed Central. She joined the non-profit open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS) in 2008, first as chief editor of PLOS Biology and later as biology editorial director. She took the lead for PLOS on issues around data access and availability and launched PLOS’s data sharing policy. At The BMJ she is responsible for operations, delivering the journal online and in print.

Casey has been a strong champion of preprints and will discuss his efforts in this area including resources that he has shared to help advance the spread of preprints not only amongst researchers but publishers. These include letters to respond to journals that invite reviews but have unclear preprint policies. His lab members have also analyzed the licensing of preprints and the coverage of literature provided by the pirate repository, Sci-Hub. His talk will touch on each of these areas, and also a discussion of the Research Parasite and Symbiont Awards, which aim to advance recognition for data sharing and reuse.

About Casey Greene

Casey is an assistant professor in the Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the Childhood Cancer Data Lab for Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation. His lab develops deep learning methods that integrate distinct large-scale datasets to extract the rich and intrinsic information embedded in such integrated data. Before starting the Integrative Genomics Lab in 2012, Casey earned his PhD for his study of gene-gene interactions in the field of computational genetics from Dartmouth College in 2009 and moved to the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow from 2009-2012. The overarching theme of his work has been the development and evaluation of methods that acknowledge the emergent complexity of biological systems.

Leonid Teytelman - Call to reduce random collisions with information; we can automatically connect scientists to the knowledge that they need.

Every scientist knows that virtually all papers, including their own, contain mistakes. A key motivation for creating protocols.io was to make it possible to share corrections and optimizations of published research protocols and to have this information automatically reach the scientists using these methods. While pushing relevant knowledge to the users is built into all aspects of protocols.io, we can do a lot more. If publishers, Crossref, and reference management platforms collaborate, we can move beyond the search towards a point where important information automatically reaches the appropriate researchers.

About Leonid (Lenny) Teytelman

Lenny is the Co-founder and CEO of protocols.io, an open access platform to share and discover research protocols. It enables scientists to make, exchange, improve and discuss protocols and it is poised to dramatically accelerate and to increase reproducibility of scientific research. Lenny did his graduate studies at UC Berkeley and finished his postdoctoral research at MIT. Lenny has a strong passion for sharing science and improving research efficiency through technology.

How can we facilitate the fair advancement and dissemination of knowledge? The risks and shortcomings within scholarly publishing are always under scrutiny, but some problems don’t seem to be going away. What should we do about obvious gender inequality within some disciplines, or the weight given to Impact Factor as a measure of quality? The Royal Society of Chemistry has a royal charter to publish scientific content in a way that serves the public interest, and as such its Data Science team devotes part of its time to analysing the social challenges facing scholarly publishing. In this talk, Nicholas Bailey will share some examples.

About Nicholas Bailey

Nicholas Bailey is a web analytics expert, a swimmer, a father, and a data geek. After spending several years in the Marketing team at the Royal Society of Chemistry, ultimately managing the database marketing team, he moved out of Marketing and into the Data Science team in order to work more closely with agile teams of developers and strengthen his data analysis and coding skills. Nicholas has a lot to say about measuring digital products, machine learning, and the potential of data science to contribute to positive social outcomes.

Miguel Escobar Varela - Digital Humanities in Singapore: some thoughts for the future.

Singapore-based researchers from a variety of disciplines are currently using digital tools to study the humanities, in areas as diverse as history and dance studies. This talk will present an overview of current projects and suggest a path for the growth of this field in Singapore. It argues that the future of DH requires better inter-institutional infrastructure for long-term data storage, clearer protocols for interoperability and more freely available and reusable datasets. This is easier said than done, but looking at the examples of other countries can provide some sources for inspiration.

About Miguel Escobar Varela

Miguel Escobar Varela is an assistant professor in the University Scholars Programme (USP) at the National University of Singapore. At the USP, Dr. Varela teaches in the domain of Humanities and Social Sciences. He is a theatre researcher and software programmer. His interests are in teaching theatre through interactive websites and applying computational methods to study performances in Singapore and Indonesia.

Kuansan Wang - Democratize access to scholarly knowledge with AI.

With the advent of big data and cloud computing, artificial intelligence has made tremendous strides in recent years. Not only has machine surpassed humans in playing the chess game Go and Jeopardy game shows, reports of superhuman performance in other highly cognitive tasks, ranging from image classification to speech recognition, also abound. Have we reached a stage where the advancements in AI can help tackle a problem in scientific pursuits, namely, the access and the dissemination of scholarly knowledge? This talk describes Microsoft Academic, a project inside Microsoft Research that uses the state-of-the-art AI in natural language understanding and knowledge acquisition to harvest knowledge from scholarly communications and make it available on the web. The talk will describe the technical challenges that have been overcome, the world-wide research collaborations that have since been enabled, and discuss the potentials of making knowledge more readily available to the mass.

About Kuansan Wang

Kuansan Wang is the Managing Director at Microsoft Research Outreach (MSR), where he started in March 1998 as a Researcher in the speech technology group working. In 2004, he moved to the speech product group and became a software architect where he helped create and ship the product Microsoft Speech Server, which is still powering the corporate call center for Microsoft. Since September 2007, he has been back at MSR, joining the newly founded Internet Service Research Center with a mission to revolutionize online services and make Web more intelligent. In March 2016, he took on an additional role as a Managing Director of MSR Outreach, an organisation with the mission to serve the research community.

Coming to a venue near you

Vanessa Fairhurst — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

First of all – hello! I’m Vanessa. I’m fairly new to Crossref, having just joined our outreach team a few weeks ago. I previously worked in International Development, enabling individuals and institutions in Africa, Asia and Latin America to access cutting edge scholarly research and knowledge, supporting national development and transforming lives.

A firm belief in the importance of connecting research and information around the world led me to Crossref where my role of International Community Outreach Manager connects me with a range of different people working across diverse disciplines and sectors. I’ll be supporting the coordination of our local LIVE events and helping to set up an ambassador program (more information on this coming soon) to deepen regional connections around the globe. You can read more about myself and my colleagues at Crossref on our People page.

As Crossref membership continues to grow globally, it becomes increasingly important for us to look at new ways to engage with our international membership base.

You may have heard about our LIVE local events, or even attended one in person before. These are free-to-attend, one day, regional events (local to you), providing a tailored program of activities which include information on the key concepts of Crossref, the services we offer and our future plans.

In the past year we have held LIVE local events in Brazil, Beijing, Boston and most recently Seoul. We also have a London LIVE event coming up soon. Next year we are aiming to be even more ambitious, hoping to expand our activities to a number of different countries around the world.

Images left to right, Crossref LIVE participants in Seoul, Crossref LIVE speakers in Brazil, and literature we use at our LIVE events

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When running our LIVE local events, we collaborate with local organisations to ensure they are appropriate, accessible, and applicable to the country context. Members support us by lending their local expertise with regards to venue selection, suggestions for speakers, tailored content, translation of materials and participant enrolment. We collaborate on logistics, content, Crossref speakers and the promotion of the event to our members and the wider community.

When running our LIVE local events, we collaborate with local organisations to ensure they are appropriate, accessible, and applicable to the country context. Members support us by lending their local expertise with regards to venue selection, suggestions for speakers, tailored content, translation of materials and participant enrollment. We collaborate on logistics, content, Crossref speakers and the promotion of the event to our members and the wider community.

We will release more information of upcoming regional events in due course, but we are working on the following countries as priorities for 2018-19:

Asia-Pacific: Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Australia
Central Asia: India
Latin America: Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Brazil
Middle East: UAE (Dubai or Abu Dhabi)
Africa: South Africa, Kenya
Eastern Europe: Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Poland
Western Europe: Germany, Spain, UK
North America: Canada, USA

If you are interested in hosting a LIVE local event or have any suggestions for one in your region, then we would love to hear from you. View more information on our LIVE locals page or contact us to hear more or get involved.

2017 election slate

Lisa Hart Martin — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Slate of 2017 board candidates announced, and it’s going to be exciting

Crossref is always evolving and the board knows it must evolve with us so we can continue to provide the right kind of services and support for you, as members of the research community.

This year two things happened for the first time: we used our updated bylaws see article VII, section 2 agreed by the board last year, to allow more candidates than available seats; and secondly, to issue an open call for expressions of interest. Many members of the current board felt it was vital to move to this more transparent process.

With Crossref developing new services for new types of members at a rapid pace, it’s an exciting time to be on the board of directors. With 25 expressions of interest it seems we’re not the only ones who think so!

From these 25 applications, the Nominating Committee has proposed the following nine candidates to fill the six seats open for election to our board of directors:

American Institute of Physics (AIP), Jason Wilde, USA
F1000 Research, Liz Allen, UK
Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), Gerry Grenier, USA
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), Vincent Cassidy, UK
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press (MIT Press), Amy Brand, USA
OpenEdition, Marin Dacos, France
SciELO, Abel Packer, Brazil
SPIE, Eric Pepper, USA
Vilnius Gediminas Technical University Press (VGTU Press), Eleonora Dagiene, Lithuania

Read the candidates’ organisational and personal statements

Candidates were chosen based on the following criteria:

That board representation should be reflective of membership
A balance of types and sizes of organisations
That all committee choices and recommendations were unanimous

You can be part of this important process, by voting in the election

If your organisation is a member of Crossref on September 15 2017, you are eligible to vote when voting opens on September 28 (affiliates, however, are not eligible to vote).

How can you vote?

On September 28, your organisation’s designated voting contact will receive an email with a link to the formal Notice of Meeting and Proxy Form with concise instructions on how to vote. An additional email will be sent with a username and password along with a link to our online voting platform. It is important to make sure your voting contact is up-to-date.

Want to add your voice?

We are accepting independent nominations until 7 November 2017. organisations interested in standing as an independent candidate should contact me by this date with the endorsements of ten other Crossref members.

The election itself will be held at LIVE17 Singapore, our annual meeting, on 14 November 2017. We hope you’ll be there to hear the results.

Crossref and colleagues in South Korea

Ginny Hendricks — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Connecting Crossref, ORCID, DataCite, and our communities

Q: What do you get if you combine our three organisations for a week to catch up with our Korean community - publishers, librarians, universities, researchers, and service providers? A: Two events, plenty of meetings, great conversations and feedback, fabulous Korean hospitality, and a little jet-lag.

Over the past few years, Crossref has seen huge growth in our members in Korea. We have nine Sponsoring Affiliates (who look after nearly 1,000 members between them), two Sponsoring Members and nearly 80 Library members. With the International DOI Foundation (IDF) strategy meeting taking place in Daejon, it seemed sensible to combine that with our own events and meetings with key organisations. This also fitted nicely with some plans that ORCID and DataCite had, so we combined forces.

We (that’s me, Rachael Lammey, Ed Pentz, and Geoffrey Bilder) hosted a Crossref LIVE local event on Monday 12th June for around 80 members and affiliates. We were joined by Alice Meadows and Nobuko Maiyairi (ORCID), Martin Fenner (DataCite), and Professor Sun-Tae Hong (Seoul National University) as co-presenters. We looked at the global reach of Korean research, and how registering content with Crossref and participating in services like Reference Linking helps create valuable connections between research outputs. With so many established members in Korea, we were able to go beyond the basics and emphasize the importance of metadata input, metadata delivery, and preview our upcoming Event Data service. We also talked data-sharing and the value of integrating ORCID iDs into publisher and institution workflows.

_Growth in research outputs in Asia Pacific 2009-2017. Source: Web of Science databases SCI-E, SSCI and AHCI only, downloaded 19/4/2017. Data provided by Wiley (thank you!)_

Later in the week we took a multi-pronged approach to highlight the many shared principles of our organisations and discuss the specific initiatives we’re collaborating on. We held the Joint Global Infrastructure Conference covering the global nature of what we do and the connections/interoperability between ORCID, DataCite and Crossref. This interoperability and our governance structures lend themselves to cooperation on other initiatives such as Metadata 2020 and The OI Project, which we were able to share.

Check out all #jgic_seoul tweets.

Guest speakers volunteered to talk about how they work with our organisations - we were joined by Choon Shil Lee from the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE) to demonstrate their ORCID integrations, and Hideaki Takeda from the Japan Link Centre (JaLC) who discussed the infrastructure and services they use to register and disseminate content globally. User stories like this are great - they highlight how people work with our services, give others ideas, and also flag up where we can do more.

Part of doing more involved providing clarification on Crossref’s position alongside other DOI Registration Agencies. With a new Registration Agency in Korea, we needed to communicate the global nature of what we do to help our members achieve their discoverability goals, as not all DOIs are made equal. Through working with ORCID and DataCite colleagues we were able to place great importance both on our work worldwide, and on the benefits to Korean societies in collaborating outside national boundaries.

Combining talks from our three organisations was a great opportunity to emphasize the importance of shared global infrastructure. Geoffrey Bilder’s plug socket analogy is apt - services that work cross-border, cross-language, and cross-subject areas streamline processes for all of our different communities and enable research to travel beyond national boundaries and help it be found, linked, cited and assessed.

Want to find out more? Slides from both meetings are available here and here, and watch out for further collaborative events.

Want to be on our Board?

Lisa Hart Martin — Fri, 28 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Do you want to affect change for the scholarly community?

Our Nominating Committee is inviting expressions of interest to serve on the Board as it begins its consideration of a slate for the November 2017 election.

Key responsibilities of the Board are setting the strategic direction for the organisation, providing financial oversight, and approving new policies and services. Some of the decisions the board has made in recent years include:

Establishing The OI Project to create a persistent organisation Identifier;
Inclusion of preprints in the Crossref metadata; and
The approval to develop Event Data which will track online activity from multiple sources.

Any member can express interest in serving on the Board

We are seeking people who know about scholarly communications and would like to be part of our future. If you have a vision for the international Crossref community, we are interested in hearing from you. Crossref members that are eligible to vote, and would like to be considered, can express their interest together with statements of interest from you and from your organisation. The form should be completed and sent to us before 01 June 2017.

The role of the Nominating Committee

The Nominating Committee meets to discuss change, process, criteria, and potential candidates, ensuring a fair representation of membership. The Committee is made up of three board members not up for election, and two non-board members.

Current Nominating Committee members:

John Shaw, Sage (Chair)
Mark Patterson, eLife
Paul Peters, Hindawi
Chris Fell, Cambridge University Press
Rebecca Lawrence, F1000 Research

About the election and our Board

We have a principle of one member, one vote; our board comprises a cross-section of members and it doesn’t matter how big or small you are, every member gets a single vote. Board terms are three years, and one third of the Board is eligible for election every year. There are six seats up for election in 2017. The board meets in a variety of international locations in March, July, and November each year. View a list of the current Crossref Board members and a history of the decisions they’ve made (motions). The election opens online in late September 2017 and voting is done by proxy online or in person at the annual business meeting during Crossref LIVE in November 2017. Election materials and instructions for voting will be available to all Crossref members online in late September 2017. The board needs to be truly representative of Crossref’s global and diverse membership of organisations who publish.

Please express interest using the form, or email me with any questions.

A look back at LIVE16

April Ondis — Thu, 24 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Crossref LIVE16 opened with a Mashup Day on 1st November 2016 in London. Attendees from the scholarly communications world met to chat with Crossref team members in an open house atmosphere. The Crossref team put their latest projects on display and were met with questions, comments, and ideas from members and other metadata folks. Here’s what it looked like — you may recognize a few familiar faces.

Crossref LIVE16 in London

LIVE16 continued with the Conference Day on 2nd November, a plenary session with invited speakers and presentations by the Crossref team. Here are the presentations, in chronological order.

Dario Taraborelli speaks on “Wikipedia’s role in the dissemination of scholarship”
Ian Calvert speaks on: “You don’t have metadata (and how to befriend a data scientist)”
Ed Pentz speaks on “Crossref’s outlook & key priorities”
Ginny Hendricks speaks on “A vision for membership”
Geoffrey Bilder speaks on “The case of the missing leg”
Lisa Hart Martin speaks on “The meaning of governance”
Jennifer Lin speaks on “New territories in the Scholarly Research Map”
Chuck Koscher speaks on “Relationships and other notable things”
Carly Strasser speaks on “Funders and Publishers as Agents of Change”
April Hathcock speaks on “Opening Up the Margins”

Your survey feedback

We’re serious about making Crossref LIVE a useful and welcoming annual event for the Crossref membership as well as members of the wider scholarly communications community. That’s why we appreciate responses from the attendees who answered our survey. Here’s what we have learned from your feedback:

Content

You want speakers to tell you something new, even if you don’t agree with their points of view
Your favorite speakers were those who inspired you
You prefer an unscripted presentation style that makes complex topics accessible to all
You’re not as interested in the mechanics of Crossref’s annual election as we are

Format

You enjoyed the diversity of presenters and would like even more external speakers
You want more opportunity to ask us technical questions on the Mashup Day
You want to see panel discussions in addition to individual presentations on the Conference Day
Those who attended the Conference Day only wished they had also attended the Mashup Day

Atmosphere

You liked the casual atmosphere but wanted more seating and more dessert. So noted!

LIVE17 will be held next November 14-15 in Asia. Until then, we hope you’ll have the chance to see us at the regional Crossref LIVE events we are planning around the world throughout the year. Our next local event is Crossref LIVE in Brazil, held 13 December in Campinas and 16 December in Sao Paulo.

Smart alone; brilliant together. Community reigns at Crossref LIVE16

Ginny Hendricks — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A bit different from our traditional meetings, Crossref LIVE16 next week is the first of a totally new annual event for the scholarly communications community. Our theme is Smart alone; brilliant together. We have a broad program of both informal and plenary talks across two days. There will be stations to visit, conversation starters, and entertainment, that highlight what our community can achieve if it works together.

Check out the final program.

We’re now opening the doors to all parties—our 5,000+ members of all shapes and sizes—as well as the technology providers, funders, libraries, and researchers that we work with. Our aim is to gather the ‘metadata-curious’ and have more opportunities to talk face-to-face to share ideas and information, see live demos, and get to know one another.

Mashup Day - Tuesday 1st November 12-5pm. An ‘open house’ vibe, we’ll have several stations to visit each Crossref team, a LIVE Lounge, good food, and guest areas run by our friends at DataCite, ORCID, and Turnitin. We’ll have some special programming too, on-the-hour lightning talks, including a wild talk at 2pm from a primatologist who speaks baboon!

Conference Day - Wednesday 2nd November 9am-5pm. There is more of a formal plenary agenda this day, with keynote speakers from across the scholarly communications landscape. Our primary goal is to share Crossref strategy and plans, alongside thought-provoking perspectives from our guest speakers. We’ll hear from many corners of our community including:

Funder program officer, Carly Strasser (Moore Foundation) on “Publishers and funders as agents of change“,

Data scientist, Ian Calvert (Digital Science) on “You don’t have metadata“,

Open knowledge advocate, Dario Taraborelli (The Wikimedia Foundation) on “Citations for the sum of all human knowledge“, and

Scholarly communications librarian, April Hathcock (New York University) on “Opening up the margins“.

For our part, we will set out Crossref’s “strategy and key priorities” (Ed Pentz), “A vision for membership” (me, Ginny Hendricks), “The meaning of governance” (Lisa Hart Martin), “The case of the missing leg” (Geoffrey Bilder),”New territories in the scholarly research map” (Jennifer Lin), and “Relationships and other notable things” (Chuck Koscher).

We will also set aside thirty minutes for the important Crossref annual business meeting, when we will announce the results of the membership’s vote, and welcome new board members.

I can’t wait to welcome you all.

Have you voted?

If you’re a voting member of Crossref you’ll have cast your vote already I hope! I’m so happy to see that people have voted in record numbers although it’s under 7% of our eligible members which is not high… more on member participation next week.

One member, one vote: Crossref Board Election opens today, September 30th

Lisa Hart Martin — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Watch for two important emails on September 30th – one with a voting link and material, and one with your username and password.

Running Crossref well is a key part of our mission. It’s important that we be as neutral and fair as possible, and we are always striving for that balance. One of our stated principles is “One member, one vote”. And each year we encourage each of our members-standing at over 6000 today-to participate in the election of new board members.

It is hard to believe that November 2nd will be Crossref’s 17th annual meeting and our 16th annual Board of Directors election. How time flies, and oh, how we have grown!

Crossref’s Truths, taken from our forthcoming new website.

I am hoping that we can rally the membership to participate in this important process!

Candidates will be elected at Crossref LIVE16 for three-year terms to fill five of the 16 Board seats whose terms expire this year. The slate of candidates was recommended by the Nominating Committee, which consisted of three Board members not up for re-election, and two Crossref members that are not on the Board.

This year, Jasper Simons, APA; Paul Peters, Hindawi; Jason Wilde, AIP; Chris Fell, Cambridge University Press; and Rebecca Lawrence, f1000 served on the Nominating Committee. The Committee met to discuss the process, criteria, and potential candidates, and put forward a slate which was required to be at least equal to the number of Board seats up for election. The slate may or may not consist of Board members up for re-election.

Crossref members are welcome to run as independent candidates, as long as they have ten member endorsements sent to lhart@crossref.org with the intent to run. We sent a notification of the process in advance (this year on August 26th), so any nominations could be included in the voting materials that will be sent via email on September 30th.

You can access online voting from today at:

https://eballot4.votenet.com/PILA/admin. Watch your inbox today for emails with your username and password!

Crossref’s Annual Meeting is now Crossref LIVE16

April Ondis — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Everyone is invited to our free annual event this 1-2 November in London. (Register here)!

In years past, only Crossref members typically attended the [Crossref Annual Meeting](/crossref-live-annual). This year, we looked at the event with new eyes. We realized that we’d have even richer conversations, more creative energy, and the meeting would be even better for our members if we could rally the entire community together. So we decided to re-develop our annual event from the ground-up.

The result is Crossref LIVE16, an event with a new format and a new focus on the entirety of the scholarly communications community. We are opening doors for the whole community, welcoming publishers, librarians, researchers, funders, technology providers, and Crossref members alike.

1st November - Mashup Day, from 12 noon: an afternoon of interactive activities including mingling with the Crossref team and special guests, trying out our services, live troubleshooting, and exclusive previews of some exciting things we’re working on. Plus entertainment and refreshments at an early evening reception.

2nd November - Conference Day: a full-day plenary session with distinguished keynote speakers including April Hathcock (NYU), Carly Strasser (Moore Foundation), Ian Calvert (Digital Science), and Dario Taraborelli (Wikimedia Foundation). We will provide the most important updates about our services, and share our vision and strategies for the future.

Note: You are welcome to join us for both days or just one day, as you like.

Location: The Royal Society, London, UK.

We hope you will join us, and extend this invitation to your colleagues.

This is going to be fun.

Register here

Announcing PIDapalooza - a festival of identifiers

Ginny Hendricks — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The buzz is building around PIDapalooza - the first open festival of scholarly research persistent identifiers (PID), to be held at the Radisson Blu Saga Hotel Reykjavikon November 9-10, 2016.

PIDapalooza will bring together creators and users of PIDs from around the world to shape the future PID landscape through the development of tools and services for the research community. PIDs support proper attribution and credit, promote collaboration and reuse, enable reproducibility of findings, foster faster and more efficient progress, and facilitate effective sharing, dissemination, and linking of scholarly works.

We believe that by bringing together everyone who’s working with PIDs for two days of discussions, demos, workshops, brainstorming, updates on the state of the art, and more, we can make this happen faster. And you can help by giving us your input on which sessions would be most valuable. Please send us your ideas, using this form by September 18. We will send session proposal notifications the first week of October with the festival lineup.

Register to attend

Registration is now open — come join the festival with a crowd of like-minded innovators. And please help us spread the word about PIDapalooza in your community!

Stay updated with the latest news on on the PIDapalooza website and on Twitter (@PIDapalooza) in the coming weeks.

Looking forward to seeing you in November!

2016 upcoming events - we’re out and about!

Rosa Morais Clark — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Check out the events below where Crossref will attend or present in 2016. We have been busy over the past few months, and we have more planned for the rest of year. If we will be at a place near you, please come see us (and support these organisations and events)!

Upcoming Events
SHARE Community Meeting, July 11-14, Charlottesville, VA, USA
Crossref Outreach Day - July 19-21 - Seoul, South Korea
CASE 2016 Conference - July 20-22 - Seoul, South Korea
ACSE Annual Meeting 2016 - August 10-11 - Dubai, UAE
Vivo 2016 Conference - August 17-19 - Denver CO, USA
SciDataCon - September 11-17 - Denver CO, USA
ALPSP - September 14-16 - London, UK
OASPA - September 21-22 - Arlington VA, USA
3:AM Conference - September 26 - 28 - Bucharest, Romania
ORCID Outreach Conference - October 5-6 - Washington DC, USA
Frankfurt Book Fair - October 19-23 - Frankfurt, Germany (Hall 4.2, Stand #4.2 M 85)
Crossref Annual Community Meeting #Crossref16 - November 1-2 - London, UK**
PIDapalooza - November 9-10 - Reykjavik, Iceland
OpenCon 2016 - November 12-14 - Washington DC, USA
STM Digital Publishing Conference - December 6-8 - London, UK

The Crossref outreach team will host a number of outreach events around the globe. Updates about events are shared through social media so please connect with us via @CrossrefOrg.

Outreach Day DC. Next Up? You Tell Us

Jennifer Kemp — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Rallying the community is a key Crossref role. Sometimes this means collaborating on new initiatives but it is also an ongoing process, a cornerstone of our outreach efforts. Part of rallying the community is bringing people together, literally, in a series of outreach days around the globe. It means we encourage dialog with us and among members and non-publisher affiliates. We want to hear from the community and we hope to facilitate conversations in it. Not just about Crossref, but larger issues of scholarly communications and your particular part in it. The Crossref outreach team is doing a number of events around the world to bring together the community for updates, feedback and discussion.

On 16 June, Crossref hosted an all day session in Washington, DC where we were joined by about 35 attendees from the region, mostly publishers. The size of the group made for lots of discussion, and we are grateful for the feedback. Here is what we took away from the event:

We all need a better understanding of who is using Crossref metadata and how

Sure, we all know that, for example, submission systems, libraries and hosting platforms use Crossref metadata (‘metadata out’), but pinpointing where in workflows (often multiple instances) and the interplay between publishers and these systems? Not so much. Help us change that: take this short survey to tell us how publisher metadata quality affects your systems and workflows and we will, in turn, make use cases (anonymized if you wish) available as part of an ongoing effort to promote the value of more, better and enriched metadata.

Here I must say a big thank you to our guest speaker for the day, Carly Robinson, who provided an excellent presentation on the work of OSTI, of the U.S. Department of Energy. Carly shared examples of how OSTI uses the Crossref metadata in their systems to aid compliance and compliment the DOE public access model. A live use case is a welcome way to partner with our community!

The more things change, the more they emphasize core best practices

A good part of the day was spent on new initiatives such as: DOIs for preprints, auto-update of ORCID records, ‘early content registration’ , linked clinical trials and more. All good stuff-the industry evolves and workflows must keep pace-but none of which generated a great deal of questions or expressed concern.

One session that did spur a lot of discussion was a simple overview of where Crossref services sit in the publishing process (including pre- and post-). Perhaps this is because it was early in the day but the much-appreciated discussion underscored the need to make the case for enriched metadata in a well-understood workflow that reflects the roles of publishers and affiliate users of metadata.

Outreach is an experiment in which we are all subjects

Finally, it must be noted here that we actively seek feedback on our Community Outreach days! We are not a large team and we can’t do as many outreach days as we’d like, but we are very open to hearing from you: So, tell us in this quick survey: what should we discuss? And where should we head next?

Our memories of #SSP2016

April Ondis — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Last week a bunch of Crossref’s staff traveled to the 2016 Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC. After we returned en masse, all nine of us put our heads together to share some of our personal memories of the event.

Crossref’s Rosa and Susan at the Fun Walk/Run sponsored by High Wire. 5K before breakfast!

On Cybersecurity and the Scholarly World —“The session described the many and complicated security threats that IT systems face and how threat detection and defense is a constantly ongoing activity. Certainly system administrators are challenged with the technology issues that build firewalls, block intrusions and divert disruptive activity. But perhaps even more important are the social issues that must be managed to develop an informed user community that is immune to the less technical but probably more effective hacks like phishing for user passwords.”

On Persistent Identifiers in Scholarly Communications: What, Why, How, Where, and Who? “Everyone from Crossref loved this panel, which should come as no surprise (wink). Persistent identifiers such as DOIs and ORCID iDs enable machine and human readers to discover, cite, link, and correctly attribute works across different platforms. David Crotty of the Oxford University Press said it best with ‘If you’re not actively building these persistent identifiers into your systems, get busy!’ Alice Meadows of ORCID represented the scholarly communications infrastructure with an image of shiny copper plumbing - don’t tell me we don’t have glamorous jobs! Laura Rueda of DataCite had particularly helpful diagrams to explain how persistent identifiers ease and speed the workflow of a research object as it travels from researcher to publisher to the greater community.”

On Crossing Boundaries: Encouraging Diversity in Scientific Communication with Dr. Margaret-Ann Armour — “I decided to attend this keynote when I saw that men as well as women were in the audience. Dr. Armour had great anecdotes that supported formal data on women’s roles in STEM. It made me reflect on how the path to a career in scholarly publishing is often not direct, and relies on personal networking. She was very witty and deserved her standing ovation.”

On Standards and Recommended Practices to Support Adoption of Altmetrics — “Todd Carpenter summed up the intent behind many altmetrics initiatives when he said that understanding how many people are using and reading scholarly content is important because ‘we all want to know how we’re doing’ but ‘this project should never become the number’ because the intent is about ‘trying to add flavor and nuance to the conversation in a meaningful way’. Stuart Maxwell of Scholarly IQ also made a really astute observation that “all assessment is in some way subjective - impact is relative to how you compare yourself to other researchers in your field.” What especially appealed to me about this session was learning that NISO extends its remit to include the data quality performance of altmetrics aggregators themselves. Asking each aggregator to self-report a publicly available, annual accounting of how they comply with the Altmetrics Data Quality Code of Conduct will likely increase consistency, transparency and trust.”

SSP receptions & evening events, where mashed potato sundaes were a thing

Yes, the sessions are great, but some of the really interesting sights, sounds and discussions occur at the evening events. It’s impossible for one person to cover all of them (or is it?), but our idea of a few memorable highlights from this year’s SSP are, in no particular order:

“Tuesday’s reception—bar conveniently located just steps from the Crossref booth meant lots of good traffic! The convivial atmosphere made it easy to ignore that we were all tantalizingly close to the glorious view just outside the hotel doors. Wednesday’s reception was a chance to meet all the folks who didn’t make it in Tuesday. Though it seems most of us were delayed arriving in Vancouver, it was well worth the trip and arriving to find a few hundred colleagues all enjoying happy hour is a fine way to start a meeting.”

“HighWire’s reception at the Vancouver Rowing Club provided a lovely walk on the way there, a great band at the party and a shrimp tower almost (but not quite) too good looking to eat. The pouring rain on the walk back made for a memorable bonding experience.”

“Wildebeest was the atmospheric site of the Silverchair reception and great chance to see a bit of downtown before enjoying some good cheese and fine company. At least two of us attending made plans to save the world through better metadata. Over sparkling rose wine no less.”

“Dolphins and sea otters made merry in a pool outside the Sheridan Group reception at the Vancouver Aquarium, while we noshed and drank with the fishes inside. But the food rivalled the undersea sights. A very nice gentleman with an ice cream scoop filled a parfait glass with a perfectly round dollop of mashed potatoes and told me to help myself to toppings. Shut the front door! I got the works. Delicious creamy mashed (whipped) potatoes of a perfect consistency, a ladle full of warm brown gravy topped with a generous sprinkle of finely sliced green onions (scallions), and a healthy spray of large, crispy bacon pieces!! It looked like a sundae … that you eat with a fork!!”

“The President’s reception was in the world’s largest hotel suite (approximately), with some very photogenic desserts and a lot of happy people who know that it’s well worth sacrificing some sleep for the event.”

Of course, the hotel bar in the evenings had some memorable discussions too but what happens in the bar stays in the bar, right? And we should probably all be grateful for the early last call …

’Til next year!

Watch Speaker Videos from the 2015 Annual Meeting

April Ondis — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

You might have missed it, but you haven’t missed out. If you want to watch – or savor re-watching – the presentations from last week’s 2015 Crossref Annual Meeting, we’ve embedded each video below in chronological order. Sit back, relax, and take it all in (again) just as though you were in an air-conditioned ballroom at the Taj.

Note: You can find the playlist containing all the videos on our YouTube channel.

Ed Pentz, Crossref Executive Director, focuses on the best practice of writing DOIs as actionable hyperlinks in his presentation, Crossref Best Practice: http://www.slideshare.net/Crossref/ed-pentz-crossref15-55435481 (slides only)

Martin Paul Eve senior lecturer at Birkbeck University, London, delivers a trenchant criticism of the process small publishers must go through when getting and depositing their first Crossref DOI in his presentation, Crossref Deposit: A Scholar-Publisher Experience:

Anne Coghill, Manager of Peer Review Operations for the American Chemical Society, detailed their process for deciding where in the manuscript workflow to insert CrossCheck plagiarism screening in her presentation, American Chemical Society Publications and CrossCheck: http://www.slideshare.net/Crossref/ann-coghill-crossref15 (slides only)

Ben Hogan, Regional Manager in Wiley’s Peer Review Management team, shares Wiley’s pain points as well as its positive experiences in using CrossCheck to detect plagiarism in his presentation, _CrossCheck Usage and Case Studies: _

Jure Triglav, Lead Developer for the PubSweet Publishing Framework at the Collaborative Knowledge Foundation, demonstrates how to mine data from the corpus of open science using Crossref’s metadata via its API and open source tools from the Collaborative Knowledge Foundation in his presentation, Making Science Writing Smarter:

Scott Chamberlain, open science researcher, shows the several advantages of using programmatic tools such as R, Python, and Ruby to mine text and data, including Crossref metadata, in his presentation, _Text and Data Mining: _

Helen Duriez, ePublishing Manager at the Royal Society, describes the Royal Society’s experience with providing Crossmark data as a means of communicating document version information in her presentation, Crossmark – a journey through time (and space?) 2015

John Chodacki, chair of Crossref’s DET committee, describes the future state of the DOI Event Tracker as an open hub for collecting and sharing data around web events that involve DOIs in his presentation, DOI Event Tracker 2015:

Marc Abrahams, editor and co-founder of the Annals of Improbable Research, makes you LAUGH, then THINK with his keynote speech, Improbable Research, the Ig Nobel Prizes, and You:

Juan Pablo Alperin describes the ways that Crossref and the Public Knowledge Project can work together to support common goals, in his presentation, _PKP and Crossref: Two P’s in a Cross

Ed Pentz, Crossref Executive Director, summarizes the organisation’s expansion over the past year with his presentation, Crossref Growth and Change:

Ginny Hendricks, Director of Member & Community Outreach, details the findings of Crossref’s recent stakeholder research and the organisation’s future plans to enhance member experience with her presentation, Member & Community Outreach:

Jennifer Lin, Director of Product Management, visualizes Crossref’s role as a map maker for the scholarly web in her presentation, Crossref: Building an Open Map for the Scholarly Enterprise:

Chuck Koscher, Director of Technology, gives us performance stats for the Crossref system, including aggregate uptimes and how long it takes to deposit metadata, in his presentation, Crossref System Performance:

Geoffrey Bilder, Director of Strategic Initiatives, sheds light on the status of current and future research projects that are part of Crossref’s new product development process in his presentation, Strategic Initiatives Update:

Scott Chamberlain, open science researcher, proposes the use of programmatic tools, such as the R programming language working with the Crossref search API, to undertake scientific research in his presentation, Thinking Programmatically:

Martin Paul Eve, senior lecturer at Birkbeck University, London, bears us back to the origins of the scholarly mission, considers the implications of the notion that researchers work within a symbolic economy, and looks at the practical challenges brought about by open access modes of publication for works in the Humanities in his wide-ranging presentation, Open Access & the Humanities: Digital Approaches:

Slideshare, Too!

Finally, each speaker has generously made their slides available here: http://www.slideshare.net/Crossref/tag/crossref15

_ _

2015 Annual Meeting: Speakers Announced

April Ondis — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Curious about who will be speaking at Crossref’s Annual Meeting this year? We have a flock of scholarly communications talent gathering at the Taj Hotel in Boston from November 17-18, 2015. In addition to our line-up of keynote speeches and technical workshops, we will be celebrating Crossref’s 15^th Anniversary with a quindecennial fête on Wednesday evening, November 18^th. There’s still time to register, so please join us!

Distinguished Guest Speaker Bios:

Marc Abrahams will be a keynote speaker at Crossref’s 2015 Annual Meeting. Marc writes about research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK. He is editor and co-founder of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), host and main writer of the Improbable Research weekly podcast (distributed by CBS), and author of This is Improbable Too and other books. He edits and writes much of the web site and blog www.improbable.com, and for thirteen years wrote a column (called “Improbable Research”) for The Guardian newspaper.

Marc is the father and Master of Ceremonies of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, honoring achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. The Prizes are handed out by genuine Nobel Laureates at a gala ceremony held each autumn at Harvard University and broadcast on the internet and on National Public Radio.

Marc is author of the books The Ig Nobel Prizes, The Man Who Cloned Himself, Why Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans, This Is Improbable, This is Improbable Too, The Ig Nobel Cookbook, volume 1 (co-authored with Corky White and Gus Rancatore). He edited (and wrote much of) the science humor anthologies The Best of Annals of Improbable Research and Sex As a Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble (and other improbabilities).

Marc has a degree in applied mathematics from Harvard College, spent several years developing optical character recognition computer systems (including a reading machine for the blind) at Kurzweil Computer Products, and later founded Wisdom Simulators, a creator of educational software.

Juan Pablo Alperin will be a keynote speaker at Crossref’s 2015 Annual Meeting. Juan is an Assistant Professor and a Research Associate with the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) at Simon Fraser University. Juan started working with the PKP in 2007, and has continued to be involved as systems developer, project manager, and researcher. Juan leads and advises on several of PKP’s R&D and Scholarly Inquiry initiatives as a complement to his research and work on scholarly communications more broadly. He can be reached via @juancommander. ORCID iD: orcid.org/0000-0002-9344-7439.
Scott Chamberlain will be a keynote speaker as well as a presenter at Crossref’s 2015 Annual Meeting. Scott is a scientific programmer who contributes to the field of scholarly literature by developing software for accessing open data on the web. He co-founded a developer collective called rOpenSci to help connect open source data into the R environment, a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics that runs on all major platforms. Scott maintains a few clients to work with Crossref APIs, and a text mining client that leverages Crossref’s TDM service. In addition, Scott maintains clients in R, Ruby, and Python to interact with Legotto, a platform for collecting and delivering altmetric data. A former ecologist, Scott is currently working full time on rOpenSci at the University of California at Berkeley. He can be reached via @recology_/@opensci. ORCID iD: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1444-9135.
John Chodacki will be a presenter at Crossref’s 2015 tech workshops. John is Director of University of California Curation Center (UC3) at California Digital Library (CDL). At UC3, John works with UC campuses and the broader community to ensure that CDL’s digital curation services meet the emerging needs of the scholarly community, including digital preservation, data management, and reuse. Prior to joining UC3, John was Product Director at PLOS where he led cross-departmental strategic projects such as the Article-Level Metrics (ALM) initiative. He has served on the Crossref board and is currently the Committee Chair for DOI Event Tracker (DET). He can be reached via @chodacki. ORCID iD: orcid.org/0000-0002-7378-2408.
Anne Coghill will be a presenter at Crossref’s 2015 Annual Meeting. Anne is Manager, Peer Review Operations, in the American Chemical Society Publications Division. She and her colleagues manage the manuscript submission and peer review environment for ACS’ scholarly journals and books publishing program. Anne holds a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Illinois State University and a Master in Science in Management Studies from Northwestern University. She is also the co-editor of The ACS Style Guide, third edition. She can be reached via @AnneCoghill. ORCID iD: orcid.org/0000-0002-2773-2282.
Helen Duriez will be a presenter at Crossref’s 2015 tech workshops. Helen is the ePublishing Manager at the Royal Society, responsible for developing the Society’s digital journals strategy as well as the day-to-day management of its journal websites. Since digital innovation transcends the traditional boundaries of scholarly publishing, she spends a lot of time pondering a variation of Freud’s musings, ‘what do researchers want?’ Helen can be contacted via @HDuriez and @RSocPublishing.
Martin Paul Eve will be a keynote speaker as well as a presenter at Crossref’s 2015 Annual Meeting. Martin is Senior Lecturer in Literature, technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London and a founder of the Open Library of Humanities. He is the author of three books: Pynchon and Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno (Palgrave, 2014); Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future (Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Password [a cultural history (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2016) and many journal articles. A strong advocate for open access to scholarly material, Martin has given evidence to the UK House of Commons Select Committee Inquiry into Open Access; served on the Jisc OAPEN-UK Advisory Board, the Jisc National Monograph Strategy Group, and the Jisc Scholarly Communications Advisory Board; been a member of the HEFCE Open Access Monographs Expert Reference Group; and is a member of the SCONUL Strategy Group on Academic Content and Communications. Martin is also a qualified computer programmer (Microsoft Professional in C# and the .NET Framework) and is the author of the digital publishing tools meTypeset and CaSSius. He can be reached via @martin_eve. ORCID iD: orcid.org/0000-0002-5589-8511.
Ben Hogan will be a presenter at Crossref’s 2015 tech workshops. Ben is a Regional Manager in Wiley’s Peer Review Management team, responsible for leading the North America and Open Access teams. He works with internal and external stakeholders to bring in new work and refine the peer review experience to be as efficient as possible for authors and editorial offices. Ben’s worked in publishing since 2007 in a variety of capacities, including books and journals production, training, and peer review. His interests include user experience and publication ethics.
Jure Triglav will be a presenter at Crossref’s 2015 tech workshops. His presentation,Using Crossref’s API to Make Smarter Science Writing , will explore how continuously talking to Crossref’s API can help us write better scientific content. Topics will include calling the API from JavaScript, combining Crossref data with modern web-based text editors, and more.Jure is an open science software developer. Jure graduated from medical school 4 years ago, but started working as a developer for Academia.edu shortly after. Now he focuses on technology issues present in open science and runs several projects in this space: @ScienceGist, @ScienceToolbox and @ScholarNinja. Jure also works with open science organisations like PLOS, working on software that will power the future of scientific publishing. He can be reached via @juretriglav.

Crossref Staff Speaker Bios:

Geoffrey Bilder is Director of Strategic Initiatives at Crossref, where he has led the technical development and launch of a number of industry initiatives including CrossCheck, Crossmark, ORCID and FundRef. He co-founded Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group in 1993, providing the Brown academic community with advanced technology consulting in support of their research, teaching and scholarly communication. He was subsequently head of IT R&D at Monitor Group, a global management consulting firm. From 2002 to 2005, Geoffrey was Chief Technology Officer of scholarly publishing firm Ingenta, and just prior to joining Crossref, he was a Publishing Technology Consultant at Scholarly Information Strategies. He can be reached via @Geoffrey Bilder. ORCID iD: orcid.org/0000-0003-1315-5960.
Ginny Hendricks is Director of Member & Community Outreach for Crossref, and is responsible for Crossref’s communications, business development, member services, and product support initiatives. Before joining Crossref, she ran Ardent Marketing for nine years, where she consulted with publishers to craft multichannel marketing strategies, develop, brand, and launch online products, and build engaged communities. She previously managed Elsevier’s launch of Scopus, the abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. While at Elsevier, she established advisory boards and outreach programs with library and scientific communities. In 1998, Ginny started an early e-resources help desk for Blackwell’s information Services and later led training and communication programs for Swets’ digital portfolio in Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. She’s lived and worked in many parts of the world, has managed globally dispersed creative, technical, and commercial teams, and co-hosts the Scholarly Social networking events in London. She can be reached via @GinnyLDN. ORCID iD: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0353-2702.
Chuck Koscher has been the Director of Technology for Crossref since 2002. His primary responsibility has been the development and operation of Crossref’s core services and technical infrastructure. As a senior staff member he also contributes to the definition of Crossref’s mission and the expansion of its services such as the recent launch of Fundref. His role includes management of technical support and back-end business operations. Chuck and his team interface directly with members in dealing with issues effected by new or evolving industry practices such as those involving non-journal content like books, standards and databases. Chuck has been active within the industry having served 9 years on the NISO board of directors, and a participant in initiatives such as the NISO/NFAIS Best Practices in Journal Publishing and NISO’s Supplemental Material Working Group. Prior to Crossref Chuck has over 20 years in software engineering experience primarily in the aerospace industry. ORCID iD: orcid.org/0000-0003-2181-9595.
Rachael Lammey is a Product Manager on Crossref’s Crosscheck plagiarism screening and Text and Data Mining API initiatives, among other tools that Crossref make available for publishers build upon. Rachael has been with Crossref since March 2012. She previously worked in journals publishing for Taylor & Francis for nearly six years, managing a team who worked with online submission and peer review systems. She has a degree in English Literature from St. Andrews University and a MA in Publishing Studies from the University of Stirling. She can be reached via @rachaellammey. ORCID iD: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5800-1434.
Jennifer Lin is the Director of Product Management at Crossref. She has worked in product development, project management, community outreach, and change management within the scholarly communications, education, and public sectors since 2000. She spent four years at the Public Library of Science (PLOS) where she oversaw product strategy and development for their data program, article-level metrics initiative, and open assessment activities. Prior to PLOS, she was a consultant with Accenture, working with Fortune 500 companies as well as governments, to develop and deploy new products and services. Jennifer earned her PhD at Johns Hopkins University. Jennifer can be reached via @jenniferlin15. ORCID iD: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9680-2328.
Ed Pentz is the Executive Director of Crossref, a not-for-profit membership association of publishers set up to provide a cross-publisher reference linking service to organise publisher metadata, run the infrastructure that makes Digital Object Identifier (DOI) links work, and rally multiple community stakeholders to develop tools and services that enable advancements in scholarly publishing. Ed was appointed as Crossref’s first Executive Director when the organisation was created in 2000. Crossref is now the largest DOI registrar in the world with over 75,000,000 DOIs. Ed is also Chair of the Board of ORCID, a registry of unique identifiers for researchers established in 2010. Prior to joining Crossref, Ed held electronic publishing, editorial and sales positions at Harcourt Brace in the US and UK and managed the launch of Academic Press’ first online journal, the Journal of Molecular Biology, in 1995. Ed has a degree in English Literature from Princeton University and lives in Oxford, England. He can be reached via @epentz. ORCID iD http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5993-8592.

Scheduled Booth Presentations at the Frankfurt Book Fair

Anna Tolwinska — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Oktoberfest is in full swing and that makes me think that it’s almost Frankfurt Book Fair time again!

This year in addition to individual meetings we’ll have scheduled flash presentations on our booth, M91 in Hall 4.2. These short (10-minute) presentations are great for anyone wanting a quick intro to what Crossref is all about. Running on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday - at the following times each of those days:

10am - Small Publisher Tools
12pm - DOIs & Metadata Basics
3pm - Exploring through APIs

If you’d like to meet with us (Ed Pentz, Ginny Hendricks, Rachael Lammey, or Anna Tolwinska) please contact Rosa Morais Clark to set up a meeting.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Taxonomies Meet-up at #FBM15

Ginny Hendricks — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The Taxonomies Interest Group would like to invite Crossref members to an informal drop-in at the Frankfurt Book Fair:

4-5pm on Wednesday 14th October at the TEMIS booth H76

The group would like to discuss how different publishers use their taxonomies for content enrichment and to explore the role that the Crossref interest group can play in promoting industry collaboration and emerging standards. TEMIS have kindly offered to host the event at their booth and provide refreshments: Please come by from 4pm at Booth H76.

Graham McCann from IOP Publishing and Christian Kohl from De Gruyter will be coordinating the event. For background information on the work the group is doing, take a look at this webinar recording from March 2015.

Annual Meeting: Join Crossref in Boston this November!

April Ondis — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

We’d like to invite the scholarly publishing community to get together in Boston this November with the Crossref Annual Meeting as a rally point. This is the event we hold just once a year to get the whole team under one roof, host a lively discussion with the leading voices in scholarly communications, present technical workshops, and offer you the chance to get hands’ on with our latest metadata services. Our free two-day event takes place from November 17-18, 2015 in Boston, MA.

Agenda:

Tuesday, November 17 - Tech Workshops:

The morning is an opportunity to get into small groups and talk directly with our development and support teams. We will present best practices around using Crossref’s metadata. After lunch, we will feature member case studies with tips on implementation and lessons learned. If you’re on the technical production side of scholarly publishing, you’ll want to be there — and not just for the beer & pretzels afterwards.

Wednesday, November 18 - Member Meeting:

A day to hear from thought leaders from the larger scholarly publishing community as well as from inside Crossref. Our keynote speaker will be Dr. Ben Goldacre (Bad Science), and our distinguished speakers include Dr. Scott Chamberlain (rOpenSci), Dr. Juan Pablo Alperin (Public Knowledge Project), and Dr. Martin Eve, (Open Library of Humanities). We will share details about the road map for Crossref Labs’ current and future initiatives, hear about the latest organisational developments from new members of our team, and see the debut of our new brand logo and communications strategy. Following the formal discussion, we’ll continue the conversation over cocktails as part of our celebration of Crossref’s milestone 15th Anniversary!

✱ Tickets:

Reserve your free tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/crossref15-tech-workshops-member-meeting-tickets-17921679225

Who Should Attend?

Scholarly publishers, technology providers, librarians, researchers, academic institutions, funders, journalists, and others who are keen to discuss tools and services to advance scholarly publishing are encouraged to attend.

✱ Venue:

Hotel Taj Boston
15 Arlington Street
Boston, MA 02116 USA

About Crossref Crossref is a not-for profit membership organisation that wants to improve research communication. We organize publisher metadata, run the infrastructure that makes DOI links work, and we rally multiple community stakeholders in order to develop tools and services to enable advancements in scholarly publishing.

Please join us for the 2009 Crossref Technical Meeting.

Anna Tolwinska — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Crossref Technical Meeting*

The Charles Hotel, Cambridge, MA

Monday, November 9th, 2009

2:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Please register today!

We also encourage you to register for our 10th Anniversary Celebration Dinner, which will take place Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 6:30 pm following the Crossref Technical Meeting at the Museum of Science in Boston, MA. Transportation from the Charles Hotel to the Museum of Science will be provided. Our 2009 Annual Meeting will take place on Tuesday, November 10th at 9:00 am in the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, MA and we urge you to register soon (if you haven’t already done so)

as space is limited. You may register for both events here.

*Please note that this year’s Technical Meeting will be on Monday afternoon.

Handle System Workshop

Tony Hammond — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I was invited to speak at the Handle System Workshop which was run back to back with an IDF Open Meeting earlier this week in Brussels and hosted at the Office for Official Publications of the European Union. (Location was in the Charlemagne Building, at left in image, within the rather impressive meeting room Jean Durieux, at right.)

My talk (‘A Distributed Metadata Architecture‘) was focussed on how OpenHandle and XMP could be leveraged to manage dispersed media assets. (The OpenHandle work makes the Handle and DOI systems more readily acessible to applications.)

Other speakers were Norman Paskin (IDF), Gordon Dunsire (Centre for Digital Library Research, University of Strathclyde), Brian Green (Editeur), Jill Cousins (European Digital Library Foundation), Jan Brase (TIB, Germany), Larry Lannom (CNRI), Ed Pentz (Crossref), Nigel Ward (Link Affiliates), and Dan Broeder (CLARIN/MPG).

The agendas for the two meetings are posted here (DOI) and here (Handle).

STM Innovations 2007

Ed Pentz — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

After a busy Online Information conference, Friday was the STM Innovations Meeting in London (presentations not online yet). There was a very nice selection of tea which helped get the morning off to a good start.

Patricia Seybold kicked off with a review of Web 2.0 that mentioned lots of sites and some good case studies:

Alexander Street Press (https://alexanderstreet.com/) - user tags combined with a taxonomy.

Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net) - share presentations

Threadless (http://www.threadless.com/) - design and vote on t-shirts

The most interesting parts of the talk were the case studies of how National Instruments and Staples have built a vibrant community of customers. Staples invited top purchasers on the their site to create product categories and sales went up 30% and now they use the categorization in physical stores and customer reviews from the web are used in stores.

NI has a whole suite of tools that allow customers to build products and get their jobs done (using NI products and services).

Five steps to Web 2.0 success –

Focus on findability
Solicit sutomers’ reviews, ratings and opinions
Empower users to classify and organize content
Nurture community, social networks, communities of practice
Get lead users to strut their stuff, using your IP to build their IP

The most useful part came in the questions when Geoffrey Bilder asked about “astroturfing” - this is a problem for Web 2.0. Interestingly, the NI and Staples examples are closed communities and other sites have to have moderators to try and track this stuff down. Often you don’t hear about these types of issues amid the web 2.0 boosterism.

Joris van Rossum gave an very good overview of Scirus’ wiki-based Topic Pages (https://web.archive.org/web/20071231210906/http://topics.scirus.com/). It’s interesting to see the creative way Elsevier is experimenting. Joris said that it is Elsevier’s vision that wiki forms a promising topic-centered platform for informal collaboration and the sharing of highly relevant info within STM in addition to the traditional peer-reviewed system. There is a critical issuem though - will researchers go to publishers for this type of thing or will they self-organize using inexpensive tools? The danger here is that publishers will do their own thing leading to a replay of the portal craze in the late 90s.

Geoffrey Bilder gave a very good talk entitled “Anonymous Bosh: Attribution in a Mashed-up World” about trust and CrossReg (contributor ID).

Simon Willison gave a very good explanation and update on OpenID. Some resources for more information - http://openid.net

http://www.openidenabled.com

https://web.archive.org/web/20070715235636/http://simonwillison.net/tags/openid/

Mark Bide wrapped things up with an update on ACAP (https://web.archive.org/web/20071019045302/http://www.the-acap.org/)- “an evolving, open, royalty-free standard for expression of permissions in machine readable form” - that was launched in November. Will the search engines pay any attention?

Overall, the day was very thought provoking.

BioNLP 2007

Tony Hammond — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Just posted on Nascent a brief account of a presentation I gave recently on OTMI at BioNLP 2007. The post lists some of the feedback I received. We are very interested to get further comments so do feel free to contribute comments either directly to the post, privately to otmi@nature.com, or publicly to otmi-discuss@crossref.org. And then there’s always the OTMI wiki available for comment at http://opentextmining.org/.

It is important to note that OTMI is not a universal panacea but rather an attempt at bridging the gap between publisher and researcher. We are attempting to provide a framework to enable scholarly publishers to disclose full text for machine processing purposes without compromising their normal publishing obligations.

IDF Open Meeting: Innovative uses of the DOI system

Ed Pentz — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Please see the details of the IDF Annual Meeting and a related Handle System Workshop in Washington, DC on June 21 which may be of interest - http://www.crossref.org.pluma.sjfc.edu/crweblog/2007/06/international_doi_foundation_a.html

Publishing 2.0

Crossref — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

XML:UK is holding a one-day conference entitled titled “Publishing 2.0” at Bletchley Park on Wednesday 25th April 2007. Bletchley Park was the location of the United Kingdom’s main codebreaking establishment during the Second World War and is now a museum (and has a train station!). The event will examine some of the more cutting-edge applications of XML technology to publishing. With keynotes by Sean McGrath and Kate Warlock and a series of must-see presentations, this will be the place to be on the last Wednesday in April.

Agile Descriptions

Tony Hammond — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Apologies to blog yet another of my posts to Nascent, this time on Agile Descriptions - a talk I gave the week before last before the LC Future of Bibliographic Control WG. (Don’t worry - I shan’t be making it a habit of this.) But certain aspects of the talk (powerpoint is here) may be interesting to this readership, in particular the slides on microformats and how these are tentatively being deployed on Nature Network, and also a detailed anatomy of OTMI files.

Crossref Author ID meeting

Amy Brand — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

February 5, 2007, Washington DC Crossref invited a number of people to attend an information gathering session on the topic of Author IDs. The purpose of the meeting was to determine:

About whether there is an industry need for a central or federated contributor id registry;
whether Crossref should have a role in creating such a registry;
how to proceed in a way that builds upon existing systems and standards.

In attendance: Jeff Baer, CSA; Judith Barnsby, IOPP; Geoff Bilder, Crossref; Amy Brand, Crossref; David Brown, British Library; Richard Cave, PLoS (remote); Bill Carden, ScholarOne; Gregg Gordon, SSRN; Gerry Grenier, IEEE; Michael Healy, BISG (remote); Helen Henderson, Ringgold; Thomas Hickey, OCLC (remote); Terry Hulburt, IOPP; Tim Ingoldsby, AIP; Ruth Jones, Britsh Library; Marl Land, Parity; Dave Martinson, ACS; Georgios Papadapoulos, Atypon (with two colleagues); Jim Pringle, Thomson; Chris Rosin, Parity; Tim Ryan, Wiley; Philippa Scoones, Blackwell; Chris Shillum, Elsevier; Neil Smalheiser, UIC (remote); Barbara Tillett, LoC; Vetle Torvik, UIC (remote); Charles Trowbridge, ACS; Amanda Ward, Nature (remote); Stu Weibel, OCLC (remote); David Williamson, LoC;

Notes Amy Brand opened the meeting and welcomed attendees. She said the goal of the meeting was really nothing more than to launch a discussion on a topic of author identifiers and hear from participants re their views and experiences on unique identifiers for individuals — be they authors, contributors, or otherwise. We went around the table and everyone introduced themselves. Amy then introduced Geoff Bilder as moderator of the meeting. Geoffrey Bilder said that Crossref’s members had indicated that they would like Crossref to explore whether it could play a role in creating an author identification system. The members feel that an “author DOI” scheme would help them with production and editorial issues. They also recognize that such a scheme could fuel numerous downstream applications. Geoff apologized for sounding like Rumsfeld and said, we know that there is a lot that we don’t know, but we don’t know exactly what we don’t know. We have just started this project and we wanted to get some feedback from various groups concerned with scholarly publishing in order to understand what people would like to see in regards to author identification schemes and what initiatives/efforts we need to be aware of. He commented that the currently assembled group failed to include the open web community, and their input would be important too as this project develops. The meeting then turned to short project summaries from others.

Project Summaries Jim Pringle gave a short PPT presentation (attached) and reported that Thomson first started creating its own author ids in 2000, in relation to the launch of its Highly Cited service. The focus for Thomson in this area has been on author disambiguation. Jim said that the focus for Crossref in this area would be a system that could respond to the question “who are you and what have you written”; he also raised concern about matters of author privacy.

Michael Healy then discussed the International Standard Party Identifier (ISPI). ISO TC 46/SC 9 is developing ISPI as a new international identification system for the parties (persons and corporate bodies) involved in the creation and production of content entities. Work on the ISPI project began in August 2006 when the New Work Item proposal was approved by the member bodies of ISO TC 46/SC 9. The first meeting of the ISPI project group was held at CISAC’s offices in Paris on September 12, 2006. This project has strong representation the library sector, RRO’s, booksellers, music and film/TV industries represented as well. Mr. René Lloret Linares from CISAC (International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers) chairs the group; until now CISAC has been using a proprietary id scheme and would like to move to use of an open standard to identify all contributors and creators. Michael was asked whether membership in the project group was open, and he replied that anyone can attend meetings as observers but that voting is restricted to those nominated by their own national standards organisation. Chris Shillum then asked the group to think about developed use cases for the publishing industry, and how they differ from potential ISPI applications.

Helen Henderson reported on the Journals Supply Chain project, a pilot that aims to discover whether the creation of a standard, commonly used identifier for Institutions (customer ids) will be beneficial to parties involved in the journal supply chain. The pilot models interactions between each party — library, publisher, agent. 35 publishers are participating thus far. Helen also said there is a clear need for sub-institutional level ids. Helen also pointed out the value of associating author and institutional ids. On the topic of institutions, Tim Ingoldsby pointed out that both academic and corporate institutions are important. Chris Rosin said Parity is working on author merger and disambiguation as core use cases of author ids for its publisher clients. In particular, they have developed automated merging of instances into profiles, proceeding with conservative bias on what constitutes a match/merge. Parity is also looking at applying author cv’s onto profiles. This will require contributors to participate, and they will need to make it as easy as possible for contributors. Chris said that authentication, trust, and privacy are key considerations; even collecting public information in one place raises privacy issues. Judith Barnsby pointed out that the UK has stronger data protection rules than the US, re privacy. Discussion among the group at this point in the meeting resulted in identifying two different areas in author id assignment — (1) ongoing assignment, (2) retroactive assignment. Geoff said this distinction was useful for Crossref, who could more easily address ongoing assignment via publishers working directly with authors.

Neil Smalheiser, a neuroscientist at UIC, reported on the Arrowsmith Project, a statistical model based on multiple features of the Medline database. The goal of the model is to predict the probability that any two papers are written by the same person. The project’s “Authority” tool weighs criteria such as researcher affiliation, co-author names, journal title, and medical subject headings to identify the papers most likely written by a target author. For details: arrowsmith.psych.uic.edu/arrowsmith_uic/index.html http://arrowsmith.psych.uic.edu/arrowsmith_uic/index.html

David Williamson of LoC said he was working on name authority files, using ONIX metadata. Barbara Tillet of LoC spoke about authority files and related efforts in library world, which uses the control number, one type of unique id. She reported that IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) has a group working on how to share authority numbers, which has actually been in discussion since the 1970s; there is to be an IFLA-IPA meeting in April 2007. The library community is eager to share what it knows and what it has developed this far. Barbara suggested that use of Dublin Core format here may be the best way to go. Different communities will no doubt need different ids. What is needed in the library community is an international, multi-lingual solution, based on unicode, connecting regional authority files. Publishers will want to take advantage of library author-ity files for retrospective identifications.

Thomas Hickey of OCLC mentioned the WorldCat Identity service, which summarizes information for 20 million authors searchable in WorldCat. Gerry Grenier reported that IEEE was about to implement its own author disambiguation and id system, and he offered that this metadata could be fed into a Crossref system. Different participants had different views on whether the goal here should be a “light and non-centralized” (or federated) approach versus a centralized registry with one place to link authors across all publishers, versus a hybrid — centralized source to handout unique id, but publisher data could be distributed. There could also be a network of registration agencies working in a federated system. Different participants also had different views on Crossref’s role. Several publishers at the meeting supported Crossref’s role, especially in the STM space, whereas there was concern raised among some parties about whether Crossref was an appropriate choice for a system that will need to be “available everywhere to everybody”, and others re-iterated the importance of giving the academic community a voice in the development of such a service Discussion then turned to use cases — the question being, what problems would having an author id help you solve in your organisation?

USE CASES ARTICULATED AT MEETING:

For RROs, known use case is to facilitate distribution of monies owed to authors;;
for booksellers, disambiguation in search;;
to understand the provenance of documents;
search — to find works for particular person; self presentation — how can I effectively present myself and my work to the world?;
cross-walks — associating various life sciences ids, such as PubChem;
identity of society members;
identity of research funding institutions;
disambiguation and attribution;
linking authors and institutions;
for enhancing peer review system — need unique ids to share information with various departments;
to better know the value of our authors — for activities such as peer review, tracking stats on authors, article downloads, and individualized or personalized services;
with a central registry, author only has one place they have to update their information;
authors will want the information to be portable when they move from inst to another — “where is Jeff Smith now?” is one such question;
to associate connected authors with one another;
to aggregate info on where (what institution) research is being done on a particular topic;
privacy can be enhanced with author DOIs;
sharing info from library to library;
cluster all the works of a particular person for search purposes;
stats about authors — “how many times has this author tried and been rejected from Nature?” for instance.

**NEXT STEPS: Please watch the CrossTech blog for ongoing discussion **

Speaking of STM Innovations

Ed Pentz — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The STM Innovations meeting on December 7th in London was excellent. Leigh Dodds has a short summary of the day on his blog. Interestingly, I can’t find anything about the conference on the STM website.

Science Commons

Tony Hammond — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Peter Murray-Rust posts on the SPARC-OpenData mailing list about a Commons for Science Conference (Oct. 3/4 in DC). The meeting is invitation-only but the papers are online (see here) and there should be public reports. The meeting underlines the importance of Open Data. There’s a brief abstract below.

_“The sciences depend on access to and use of factual data. Powered by

developments in electronic storage and computational capability,

scientific inquiry today is becoming more data-intensive in almost

every discipline. Whether the field is meteorology, genomics,

medicine, ecology, or high-energy physics, modern research depends on

the availability of multiple databases, drawn from multiple public

and private sources; and the ability of those diverse databases to be

searched, recombined, and processed.”_

Meetings on Crossref

Building, refining, and connecting: summary of our May 2026 community update

Operations, governance, and a growing membership

Introducing the Member Practices Working Group

Metadata schema

Tools and demos

Funder matching, rebuilt around ROR

Data citations API endpoint

Metadata Manager: new content types coming

Looking ahead

A new Service Providers Program

March 2026 board meeting summary

Board business

January board minutes

March board meeting agenda

Vote to appoint a director to a vacated seat

2025 year in review & framing the strategy for 2026

Establishing an additional legal entity in Europe

Governance review

Strengthening community connections in São Paulo

Português version

Reflections from Bangkok

Charleston Asia conference - a reminder of the importance of infrastructure

The importance of metadata for Asian scholarship - our panel at Charleston Asia

Crossref Bangkok - a reminder of the importance of visibility

Visiting the National Library of Thailand - a reminder of the importance of stewardship

Introducing board meeting summaries, starting with the January 2026 meeting

Crossref Board of Directors Meeting Executive Summary, January 22nd, 2026

Board business

Looking ahead to 2026

Insights from a roundtable on author affiliation metadata

Insights from presenters

Insights into challenges

Inherent data complexity

Author-related issues

Technical barriers

Publisher practices

Insights into solutions

Adopt collective approaches

Engage authors and institutions

Improve the tech

Encourage publisher best practices

Moving forward

References

Participating organizations

Crossref at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2025

First timer fun at the Frankfurt Fair - Helena

An exciting comeback - Maryna

Third time at bat - Luis

This year’s Frankfurt Veteran - Paul

Next year

Meet the candidates and cast your vote in our 2025 Board elections

Tier 1, Small member seats (electing one candidate)

Tier 2, Large member seats (electing four candidates)

Please read the candidates’ statements

Every member has a vote

Crossref at Beijing International Book Fair 2025

A snapshot from the panel discussion

Metadata Plus use cases from China

Reflections from our Ambassadors and the community

Our annual open call for expressions of interest to join our board

About our board elections

About the Nominating Committee

Board roles and responsibilities

Who can apply to join the board?

What does the committee look for?

What does the application evaluation process look like?

How to apply

Reflections from Crossref Accra 2025 - Strengthening open science and partnerships in Ghana

A summary of our Annual Meeting

Demos

The discussion about open scholarly infrastructure

Updates from our Community

Afternoon of more resources and updates from Crossref

Meet the candidates and vote in our 2024 Board elections

The 2024 slate

Tier 1 candidates (electing two seats):

Tier 2 candidates (electing two seats):

Please read the candidates’ statements

Every member has a vote