Frequently Asked Questions about CrossMark®
What’s the Benefit for Researchers?
What content may display CrossMark logos?
What content will not display CrossMark logos?
What is “publication record information”?
What is CrossMark?
CrossMark allows the researcher to verify the current status of a document.
CrossMark allows the researcher to distinguish the instances of published documents that the publisher has made a commitment to maintain.
CrossMark includes
• A logo that informs the researcher that they are reading a current, publisher-maintained copy of a piece of content
• A link to a status box that alerts them to any significant changes that may have been applied to the content since its publication. Significant changes are those that could change the interpretation or crediting of the content, and do not include minor edits or corrections.
• Additional, optional publication record information (or non-bibliographic metadata) supplied by the publisher that can help the reader evalute the work.
CrossMark logos will be applied to both HTML and PDF versions of scholarly content that publishers commit to keeping up to date.
What’s the Benefit for Researchers?
- CrossMark notifies readers of changes to content in a consistent way, regardless of who publishes it or where on the web it is stored.
- CrossMark prevents users from mistakenly relying on outdated instances of published research.
What content may display CrossMark logos?
At minimum the CrossMark logo should be applied to content hosted on the publisher’s site. It may also be applied to publish-ahead-of-print or “early release” copies that the publisher has made available and is committed to maintaining.
- The CrossMark logo can be applied to published copies hosted by licensed third parties such as aggregators.
What content will not display CrossMark logos?
Pre-prints or author manuscripts or other versions that the publisher will not be maintaining will not have CrossMark logos.
Does the presence of the CrossMark logo indicate that the article must be purchased (as opposed to free author preprints, for example)?
No. Just as not-for-profit and commercial publishers with Open Access, subscription and pay-per-view content all participate in CrossRef’s reference linking system, all types of publishers and content will participate in the CrossMark service. In some cases, articles with the CrossMark logo will be available for free, and in some cases they will be accessible through subscription or pay per view. CrossRef remains neutral about publishers’ business models. All CrossRef members share an interest in making sure the scholarship they publish is as up to date and accurate as possible in order to ensure the trustworthiness of the scholarly communications system. In fact, because many Open Access publishers encourage the wide dissemination of their publications, it may be especially valuable for those documents to be marked with a CrossMark logo so that readers can easily find update information, regardless of where they found the original article.
Does the presence of a CrossMark logo on a scholarly document indicate that the document is up-to-date?
No. A CrossMark logo indicates that the publisher is maintaining the document somewhere. In order to determine whether a particular copy of a document is up–to-date and get a persistent link to the publisher-maintained copy, a user will need to click on the logo and read the status information. Remember, Click it once. Click it twice. Click it every time.
What is “publication record information”?
Additional publication record metadata is any information about the content that the publisher wishes to include. Examples might include any of the following:
Key publications dates (i.e. submission, revision, acceptance)
- Peer review information
- Content type
- Clinical Trial Registration Numbers
- CrossCheck plagiarism screening status
- Licensing information
- Funding Sources
- Location of research data
