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CrossMark® for Publishers

What is the purpose of CrossMark?

CrossMark is designed to

  1. Communicate that the scholarly publisher is responsible for both the initial publication of a document, as well maintaining any updates to it.
  2. Enable publishers to advertise the otherwise invisible steps that they have taken to ensure the trustworthiness of their content.
  3. Highlight important “publication record” information about a document.

How Does It Work?

  1. Participating publishers send CrossMark metadata about their corrections to CrossRef as part of their normal DOI metadata deposits or as updates.
  2. Publishers attach the CrossMark logo to HTML and PDF versions of their articles or other content.
    crossmark logo

  3. Readers just click on the CrossMark logo. If they are connected to the Internet, they will see a popup box that shows the current status of the document. This works whether the reader is on the publisher’s site, a third-party site, or viewing a PDF downloaded months earlier.

Most of the time, a reader will see a message that the document is current like this:

CrossMark for Publishers

Occasionally, the reader will see a message that the document has updates.

CrossMark for Publishers

A CrossRef DOI links to the update at the publisher’s site.

What Kind of Documents Will Display the CrossMark Logo?

Any scholarly content that has been assigned a CrossRef DOI, may display the CrossMark logos.

  • journal articles
  • books
  • book chapters
  • conference proceedings
  • reports
  • theses

The publisher applying the CrossMark logo must be the publisher originally responsible for publishing the content or have formally inherited this responsibility (e.g. through an acquisition.)

CrossMark logos will only appear on published versions, not on author preprints.

For more information, see our Terms and Conditions.
To Sign Up, see Join CrossMark.
See our Implementation Page for more detailed information about the process.
See our Gallery for examples of live scholarly documents with working CrossMark logos.
Additional Resources