eLife recently won a Crossref Metadata Award for the completeness of its metadata, showing itself as the clear leader among our medium-sized members. In this post, the eLife team answers our questions about how and why they produce such high-quality open metadata. For eLife, the work of creating and sharing excellent metadata aligns with their mission to foster open science and supports their preprint-centred publication model, but it also lays the groundwork for all kinds of exciting potential uses.
Hablamos con Nacho Pérez Alcalde, Vicedirector Técnico de Editorial CSIC, la editorial al mando de ´Boletín Geológico y Minero’, ganadora del Crossref Metadata Award en la categoría de Metadata Enrichment. Miembro de Crossref desde 2008, Editorial CSIC publica 41 revistas en acceso abierto Diamante, y juega un papel esencial en la diseminación del conocimiento científico a nivel internacional. Exploramos lo que este premio ha significado para Editorial CSIC y qué planes para el futuro tienen para seguir mejorando la calidad y uso de sus metadatos.
TLDR: We’ve successfully moved the main Crossref systems to the cloud! We’ve more to do, with several bugs identified and fixed, and a few still ongoing. However, it’s a step in the right direction and a significant milestone, as, whilst it is a much larger financial investment, it addresses several risks and limitations and shores up the Crossref infrastructure for the future.
The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) has earned recognition in Crossref’s Participation Reports for its exceptional metadata coverage among large publishing members––an achievement built on intentional change, technical investment, and collaborative work. In this Q&A, the ASM team shares what that journey looked like, the challenges they’ve tackled, and how centering metadata has helped them better connect research with the global scientific community.
This application form is for those of you who wish to join Crossref independently as a member, in order to register content and DOIs and deposit metadata relating to that content.
If you wish to join Crossref through a Sponsor instead, you’ll need to fill out a different form provided by your sponsor - please request the link from your sponsor. And if you don’t want to register DOI records with us, but instead are interested in retrieving and making use of the metadata that’s been registered with Crossref, then you don’t need to become a member. Please visit our metadata retrieval page for more information.
Make sure you have all the information you need to complete the application form
There are a few steps to joining and it usually takes a week or so to complete the process, depending on how many extra questions we have to ask you. Make sure you have all the information you need before you start. We’re going to ask you lots of important questions so we can get you set up as quickly as possible. It will save a lot of time if you can put the right information into the form now rather than having to change it later:
Your organisation name - you should apply to join in the name of the parent organisation that is responsible for publishing your content, rather than in the name of your individual journal, conference, imprint or university department. Your organisation will then be able to use this single member account to register DOIs for all the content that your organisation publishes and only pay one membership fee. This means, for example, that if you wish to register a journal with us, and the journal is actually published by your university, then your university would need to join Crossref rather than just your journal or department. If you wish to register a journal and the journal itself is the largest legal entity, then you are welcome to join us in the name of your journal.
Your mailing address and your billing address - some of you will have a different address for invoices, and it’s important that we collect the correct address now. The billing address you provide in this application form is what will appear on the invoice we send you for your first year of membership as part of this application process. Before you apply, check what this should be, and also whether your finance team needs other details quoted on the invoice (for example, your tax number).
The publishing revenue or expenses of your organisation (whichever is higher) in USD - we need this information to determine which annual membership fee tier your organization fits into, so you don’t need to be exact. Our annual membership tiers start at USD 275 for organisations with publishing revenue or expenses (whichever is higher) under USD 1 million per year and go up to to USD 50,000.00 for organisations with revenue or expenses (whichever is higher) over USD 500 million. We only need to know about the revenue or expenses related to your publishing operations, not your entire organization. And you only need to give us the figure that is the highest - so if your publishing revenue is higher than your publishing expenses, we only need to know about your publishing revenue. Make sure you have calculated this figure in USD.
Contact details for three separate people at your organisation - we ask you to provide contact details (name and email address) for a range of different contact types at your organisation. Make sure you have at least three separate contacts ready to cover these five roles. (If you are a very small organisation and don’t have at least three different names and email addresses to cover these five roles, please contact our membership team to discuss the best options.)
The Primary contact - this person will be our key contact at your organisation. They receive product and service updates, and we contact them about things like changes to terms or service agreements. They also receive our monthly resolution reports showing failed resolutions on your DOIs. (Those of you who have been members for a while will know this contact as the Business contact).
The Voting contact - this person will vote in our board elections. The Voting contact is often the same person as the Primary contact. We do need a specific person’s name for the voting contact, but you can provide a generic email address. The Voting contact can’t be the voting contact on another member account.
The Technical contact - this person will receive technical updates, DOI error reports, and conflict reports to help you solve problems with your content quickly. We encourage you to use a shared, generic email address for this contact.
The Metadata quality contact - this person will be responsible for fixing any metadata errors that are spotted by the scholarly community. The Metadata Quality contact is often the same person as the Technical contact, and we encourage you to use a shared, generic email address for this contact.
The Billing contact - this person will receive invoices from us by email and pay the annual membership and ongoing content registration fees. They will also receive reminder emails about unpaid invoices. We encourage you to use a shared, generic email address for this contact. If your billing platform has an email address to send invoices to, please use this. But do note that we are unable to manually upload invoices into a payment platform.
How you plan to register your content with us - it’s useful to know how you plan to register your content with us before you join. You can find out more here.
What happens after you complete the application form?
We’ll usually take a look at your application within two working days. We may need to ask some clarifying questions but then, where applicable, we send you a pro-rated membership order (invoice) for your membership fees the remainder of the calendar year. Please note - this invoice is in USD, and we can only accept payment in USD. Do make sure that you have the capacity to pay us in USD.
Once your membership order is paid, we’ll send you a welcome email within two days including the details of your Crossref DOI prefix and how to get started setting up your access credentials to create metadata records with Crossref DOIs.
Our replies come from the email address member@crossref.org. Please add this email address to your contacts list, or add it to your safe senders list to make sure that you receive our replies.
A note for Global Equitable Membership applicants
If you are eligible for the GEM program, we will not send you a membership order for your first year of membership - you will not be charged membership fees or any content registration fees. On the application form, please just just add your mailing address into the billing address field. Please do still add a contact into the billing contact field. We will only need to use this if you take on a paid service (such as Similarity Check) in the future.
