TL;DR. Metadata Manager will be retired at the end of 2025. Over the past four years, we have been developing a new helper tool to replace it, and that tool has now reached a stage of maturity that means we will be able to switch off Metadata Manager by the end of the year.
Our REST API makes all of the metadata we hold publicly available. It receives the majority of our API traffic, with around 1 billion hits per month. It’s one of the key ways that we fulfil our mission to make research objects easy to find, cite, link, assess, and reuse. From 1 December 2025, we will be revising the rate limits for the public and polite pools of the REST API to ensure that we can maintain a stable and reliable system, and that metadata is freely available to everyone.
Noyam Journals, based in Accra, Ghana, was recently recognised for the completeness of its metadata through the Crossref Metadata Award, part of our 25th anniversary celebrations. Noyam was one of six publishers worldwide to receive the award and stood out as a leader among members of our Global Equitable Membership (GEM) Program.
Wednesday 22nd October 2025—Crossref, the open scholarly infrastructure nonprofit, today releases an enhanced dashboard showing metadata coverage and individual organisations’ contributions to documenting the process and outputs of scientific research in the open. The tool helps research-performing, funding, and publishing organisations identify gaps in open research information, and provides supporting evidence for movements like the Barcelona Declaration for Open Research Information, which encourages more substantial commitment to stewarding and enriching the scholarly record through open metadata.
This section of our documentation is for Similarity Check account administrators who plan to access iThenticate 2.0 through their Manuscript Submission System (MTS).
Not sure if you’re using iThenticate v1 or iThenticate 2.0? More here.
Not sure whether you’re an account administrator? Find out here.
To set up your integration with your MTS, you need to create an API key by logging into iThenticate through the browser. You will then share this API key and the URL of your iThenticate 2.0 account with your MTS.
Please note: If you are sponsored by Biteca, please contact your sponsor who will help you with this.
Step One: Decide how many API scopes and API keys you need
Within iThenticate, you can set up different API Scopes, and within that, different API keys. Most members will just need one API Scope and one API key. However, some members may need more than one.
If you need to integrate with more than one Manuscript Tracking System (MTS), you will need a different API Scope for each MTS.
If you publish on behalf of societies or work with other organisations who want to keep their activities separate from each other, you will need a different API Scope and API key for each society.
If at some point in the future, you need to change your API key for an existing MTS integration, you must generate a new API key under the same scope that you originally used for this integration.
Step Two: Create your API Scope and API key(s)
Click on “Integrations” in the menu.
This will bring you to the Integrations section. Click on the “Generate API Scope” key.
You will then give your API Scope a name.
For example, this may be the name of a particular MTS, or of a particular society.
Under your new API Scope, you can then set up your first API key.
Once you add the key name, you will be able to click on the “Create and view” button. The system will then generate your key.
Step three: Add your API key into your Manuscript Tracking System (MTS)
In order to integrate your new iThenticate 2.0 account and your Manuscript Tracking system(s), your MTS will require from you:
At least one API key
Your unique iThenticate URL containing your Crossref membership number using the following format: https://crossref-xxx.turnitin.com. (For example, if your Crossref Membership number is 1234, your URL will be: https://crossref-1234.turnitin.com. If you are not sure what your Crossref Membership number is, please ask us.
Follow the instructions below for the relevant MTS:
OJS
Follow the instructions found on PKP’s website. You’ll need to ensure that you’re on OJS version 3.3, 3.4, or 3.5. For instructions on how to upgrade your OJS instance, please visit PKP’s documentation here or here, depending on which version you’re currently running.
Editorial Manager
Enter your iThenticate API key(s) and your iThenticate 2.0 account URL into the iThenticate configuration page in Editorial Manager. There are instructions available from Aries Systems here.
eJournal Press
Email your API key(s) and your iThenticate 2.0 account URL to support@ejpress.com and the team at eJournal Press will set up the integration for you.
ScholarOne
If you are already using iThenticate with ScholarOne and are upgrading from iThenticate v1 to iThenticate 2.0, please email your API key(s) and your iThenticate 2.0 account URL to s1help@clarivate.com, and the team at ScholarOne will make the change for you. Please put “Product Management” in the subject line of your email.
If you are a new subscriber to Similarity Check and you haven’t used iThenticate before, you don’t need to email the team at ScholarOne. Just enter your iThenticate API key(s) and your iThenticate 2.0 account URL into the iThenticate configuration page in ScholarOne.
Scholastica
The team at Scholastica will set up the integration for you. Give them your API key(s) and your iThenticate 2.0 account URL by filling out this form.
The team at Scholastica will also set up any exclusions for you, so in the form they’ll ask you which sort of content you want to exclude from displaying as a match.
Page maintainer: Kathleen Luschek Last updated: 2022-July-18
