This year, metadata development is one of our key priorities and we’re making a start with the release of version 5.4.0 of our input schema with some long-awaited changes. This is the first in what will be a series of metadata schema updates. What is in this update? Publication typing for citations This is fairly simple; we’ve added a ‘type’ attribute to the citations members supply.
Every year we release metadata for the full corpus of records registered with us, which can be downloaded for free in a single compressed file. This is one way in which we fulfil our mission to make metadata freely and widely available.
Today, we’re delighted to let you know that Crossref members can now use ROR IDs to identify funders in any place where you currently use Funder IDs in your metadata. Funder IDs remain available, but this change allows publishers, service providers, and funders to streamline workflows and introduce efficiencies by using a single open identifier for both researcher affiliations and funding organizations.
We began our Global Equitable Membership (GEM) Program to provide greater membership equitability and accessibility to organizations in the world’s least economically advantaged countries. Eligibility for the program is based on a member’s country; our list of countries is predominantly based on the International Development Association (IDA). Eligible members pay no membership or content registration fees.
Retractions and corrections from Retraction Watch are now available in Crossref’s REST API. Back in September 2023, we announced the acquisition of the Retraction Watch database with an ongoing shared service. Since then, they have sent us regular updates, which are publicly available as a csv file. Our aim has always been to better integrate these retractions with our existing metadata, and today we’ve met that goal.
As a provider of foundational open scholarly infrastructure, Crossref is an adopter of the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI). In December 2024 we posted our updated POSI self-assessment. POSI provides an invaluable framework for transparency, accountability, susatinability and community alignment. There are 21 other POSI adopters.
Background The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) provides a set of guidelines for operating open infrastructure in service to the scholarly community. It sets out 16 points to ensure that the infrastructure on which the scholarly and research communities rely is openly governed, sustainable, and replicable.
In the scholarly communications environment, the evolution of a journal article can be traced by the relationships it has with its preprints. Those preprint–journal article relationships are an important component of the research nexus.
Just over a year ago, Crossref announced that our board had adopted the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI). It was a well-timed announcement, as 2021 yet again showed just how dangerous it is for us to assume that the infrastructure systems we depend on for scholarly research will not disappear altogether or adopt a radically different focus. We adopted POSI to ensure that Crossref would not meet the same fate.
TL;DR On November 11th 2020, the Crossref Board voted to adopt the “Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure” (POSI). POSI is a list of sixteen commitments that will now guide the board, staff, and Crossref’s development as an organisation into the future. It is an important public statement to make in Crossref’s twentieth anniversary year.