Blog

Putting content in context

Kirsty Meddings – 2019 May 13

In CrossmarkContent RegistrationMetadataMember Briefing

You can’t go far on this blog without reading about the importance of registering rich metadata. Over the past year we’ve been encouraging all of our members to review the metadata they are sending us and find out which gaps need filling by looking at their Participation Report.

The metadata elements that are tracked in Participation Reports are mostly beyond the standard bibliographic information that is used to identify a work. They are important because they provide context: they tell the reader how the research was funded, what license it’s published under, and more about its authors via links to their ORCID profiles. And while this metadata is all available through our APIs, we also display much of it to readers through our Crossmark service.

A simpler text query form

Isaac Farley – 2019 April 30

In Content RegistrationMembershipMetadataReferencesLinking

The Simple Text Query form (STQ) allows users to retrieve existing DOIs for journal articles, books, and chapters by cutting and pasting a reference or reference list into a simple query box. For years the service has been heavily used by students, editors, researchers, and publishers eager to match and link references.

We had changes to the service planned for the first half of this year - an upgraded reference matching algorithm, a more modern interface, etc. In the spirit of openness and transparency, part of our project plan was to communicate these pending changes to STQ users well in advance of our 30 April completion date. What would users think? Could they help us improve upon our plans?

Express your interest in serving on the Crossref board

Lisa Hart Martin – 2019 April 24

In BoardMember BriefingGovernanceElection

The Crossref Nominating Committee is inviting expressions of interest to serve on the Board as it begins its consideration of a slate for the November 2019 election. The board’s purpose is to provide strategic and financial oversight and counsel to the Executive Director and the staff leadership team, with the key responsibilities being: Setting the strategic direction for the organization; Providing financial oversight; and Approving new policies and services.

Quarterly deposit invoices: avoiding surprises

Isaac Farley – 2019 April 10

In Content RegistrationInvoicesMembershipMetadataIdentifiers

Whenever we send out our quarterly deposit invoices, we receive queries from members who have registered a lot of backlist content, but have been charged at the current year’s rate. As the invoices for the first quarter of 2019 have recently hit your inboxes, I thought I’d provide a timely reminder about this in case you spot this problem on your invoice.

Here’s to year one!

Vanessa Fairhurst – 2019 March 22

In EducationAmbassadorsCommunityCollaboration

Our Ambassador Program is now one year old, and we are thrilled at how the first 12 months have gone. In 2018 we welcomed 16 ambassadors to the team, based in Australia, Brazil, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, UAE, Ukraine, USA, and Venezuela. Our ambassadors are volunteers with a good knowledge of Crossref and the wider scholarly community, they are well connected and passionate about the work that we do.

Before, during, and after - a journey through title transfers

Isaac Farley – 2019 February 25

In Content RegistrationTitle TransfersMembershipMetadataIdentifiers

In January, I wrote about how we’ve simplified the journal title transfer process using our new Metadata Manager tool. For those disposing publishers looking for an easy, do-it-yourself option for transferring ownership of your journal, I suggest you review that blog post. But, whether you choose to process the transfer yourself via Metadata Manager or need some help from Paul, Shayn, or myself, there’s more to a transfer than just the click of a transfer button or the submission of an email to support@crossref.org, as I’m sure those of you who have been through a title transfer can attest.

Work through your PID problems on the PID Forum

Helena Cousijn, Rachael Lammey, Alice Meadows – 2019 February 21

In IdentifiersInfrastructureCollaborationCommunity

As self-confessed PID nerds, we’re big fans of a persistent identifier. However, we’re also conscious that the uptake and use of PIDs isn’t a done deal, and there are things that challenge how broadly these are adopted by the community. At PIDapalooza (an annual festival of PIDs) in January, ORCID, DataCite and Crossref ran an interactive session to chat about the cool things that PIDs allow us to do, what’s working well and, just as importantly, what isn’t, so that we can find ways to improve and approaches that work.

ROR announces the first Org ID prototype

Maria Gould, Ginny Hendricks – 2019 February 10

In IdentifiersOrganization IdentifierInfrastructureCollaborationCommunity

What has hundreds of heads, 91,000 affiliations, and roars like a lion? If you guessed the Research Organization Registry community, you’d be absolutely right! Last month was a big and busy one for the ROR project team: we released a working API and search interface for the registry, we held our first ROR community meeting, and we showcased the initial prototypes at PIDapalooza in Dublin. We’re energized by the positive reception and response we’ve received and we wanted to take a moment to share information with the community.

Request for feedback on grant identifier metadata

Patricia Feeney – 2019 February 07

In IdentifiersGrantsResearch FundersPersistence

We first announced plans to investigate identifiers for grants in 2017 and are almost ready to violate the first rule of grant identifiers which is “they probably should not be called grant identifiers”. Research support extends beyond monetary grants and awards, but our end goal is to make grants easy to cite, track, and identify, and ‘Grant ID’ resonates in a way other terms do not. The truth is in the metadata, and we intend to collect (and our funder friends are prepared to provide) information about a number of funding types.

Underreporting of matched references in Crossref metadata

Geoffrey Bilder – 2019 February 05

In APISCitationMetadata

TL;DR

About 11% of available references in records in our OAI-PMH & REST API don’t have DOIs when they should. We have deployed a fix, but it is running on billions of records, and so we don’t expect it to be complete until mid-April.

Note that the Cited-by API that our members use appears to be unaffected by this problem.

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