In January 2026, our new annual membership fee tier takes effect. The new tier is US$200 for member organisations that operate on publishing revenue or expenses (whichever is higher) of up to US$1,000 annually. We announced the Board’s decision, making it possible in July, and––as you can infer from Amanda’s latest blog––this is the first such change to the annual membership fee tiers in close to 20 years!
The new fee tier resulted from the consultation process and fees review undertaken as part of the Resourcing Crossref for Future Sustainability program, carried out with the help of our Membership and Fees Committee (made up of representatives from member organisations and community partners). The program is ongoing, and the new fee tier, intended to make Crossref membership more accessible, is one of the first changes it helped us determine.
It has been 18 (!) years since Crossref last deprecated a metadata schema. In that time, we’ve released numerous schema versions, some major updates, and some interim releases that never saw wide adoption. Now, with 27 different schemas to support, we believe it’s time to streamline and move forward.
Starting next year, we plan to begin the process of deprecating lightly-used schemas, with the understanding that this will be a multi-year effort involving careful planning and plenty of communication.
Scholarly metadata, deposited by thousands of our members and made openly available can act as “trust signals” for the publications. It provides information that helps others in the community to verify and assess the integrity of the work. Despite having a central responsibility in ensuring the integrity of the work that they publish, editorial teams tend not be fully aware of the value of metadata for integrity of the scholarly record. How can we change that?
Crossref was created back in 2000 by 12 forward-thinking scholarly publishers from North America and Europe, and by 2002, these members had registered 4 million DOI records. At the time of writing, we have over 23,600 members in 164 different countries. Half of our members are based in Asia, and 35% are universities or scholar-led. These members have registered over 176 million open metadata records with DOIs (as of today). What a difference 25 years makes!
In our 25th anniversary year, I thought it would be time to take a look at how we got here. And so—hold tight—we’re going to go on an adventure through space and time1, stopping every 5 years through Crossref history to check in on our members. And we’re going to see some really interesting changes over the years.
To work out which version you’re on, take a look at the website address that you use to access iThenticate. If you go to ithenticate.com then you are using v1. If you use a bespoke URL, https://crossref-[your member ID].turnitin.com/ then you are using iThenticate 2.0.
When your organisation signs up for Similarity Check, a central contact at your organisation will become your Similarity Check account administrator. They will set up all the users on your account.
When your administrator adds you as a user, you’ll receive an email from noreply@ithenticate.com with the subject line “Account Created” containing a username and a single-use password. You may only log in once with the single-use password, and you must change it the first time you log in.
Log in to your user account (v1)
Start from the link in the invitation email from noreply@ithenticate.com with the subject line “Account Created” and click Login
Enter your username and single-use password
Click to agree to the terms of the end-user license agreement. These terms govern your personal use of the service. They’re separate from the central Similarity Check service agreement that your organisation has agreed to.
To change your email address, remove your current address from the ​Email​ field, enter your new email in the same field, and click ​Update Profile​ to save.
To change your password, enter a new password in the Change Password field, repeat it in the Confirm Password field, and click ​Update Profile​ to save.
Find your way around for users (v1)
In the main navigation bar at the top of the screen, you will see several tabs:
Folders: this is the main area of iThenticate, where you upload, manage, and view documents for checking
