In April 2025, we launched the metadata matching project, in order to add missing relationships to the scholarly metadata. We will do this by consolidating all existing and planned matching workflows, which enrich member-deposited metadata in Crossref. This unified service will result in a more complete research nexus. In this blog post, we share our latest milestone: developing and evaluating a strategy for matching funder metadata to Research Organization Registry (ROR) identifiers.
Preserving the integrity of the scholarly record is an important component of the overall endeavour to protect research integrity. Open scholarly infrastructure enables persistent recording of research objects and associated metadata, which provides an evidence trail for these objects for all in the research community. Crossref and DataCite – as providers of essential infrastructure for preservation of the scholarly record – we share our joint expertise in the new guide on “Why metadata matters for research integrity and how to contribute”.
As our global community continues to grow, it is important for us to build and maintain our connections within it. In March this year, we had the opportunity to visit SĂŁo Paulo for a community event at the Fundação GetĂşlio Vargas. The content of our presentations is available online. Events such as this provide an opportunity for us to update our members on Crossref fundamentals and developments, and help us better tune in to the varied needs of our communities and learn how we can work together more effectively. This was our third visit to Brazil, with previous events held in Campinas and SĂŁo Paulo in 2016, and Goiânia and Fortaleza in 2018.Â
Each organization in the global community of Crossref members (that’s currently over 24k organizations in 166 different countries) plays a key role in building the Research Nexus. Any opportunity we have to meet with our members in person is a highlight and a way for us to learn more from each other. The month of January saw three of us travel to Bangkok to attend the first-ever Charleston Conference organised in Asia and to meet with our growing community in Thailand.
In 2022, we flagged up some changes to Similarity Check, which were taking place in v2 of Turnitin’s iThenticate tool used by members participating in the service. We noted that further enhancements were planned, and want to highlight some changes that are coming very soon. These changes will affect functionality that is used by account administrators, and doesn’t affect the Similarity Reports themselves.
From Wednesday 3 May 2023, administrators of iThenticate v2 accounts will notice some changes to the interface and improvements to the Users, Groups, Integrations, Statistics and Paper Lookup sections.
Logging in
iThenticate v2 account administrators and browser users will see a new login page when logging in to iThenticate v2:
A refreshed interface
Once logged in to iThenticate v2, account administrators will see an updated design, with improved notifications to let them know whether a task/action has been successfully completed or not.
Users
There will be improvements to the user management system for account administrators, including a much clearer navigation menu for managing active, pending and deactivated users.
There will also be a filtering option on the Users page to search for active, pending and deactivated users by first name, last name, email address, group and date added. In addition coloured labels will be introduced to easily identify the level of access (or ‘Role’) for each user.
An improved bulk user import process will be available, with clearer guidance on any issues that may arise during the upload. This new development will also include new screens for adding and editing users with more notifications to help prevent mistakes.
Integrations
For account administrators managing peer review management system integrations and needing to generate API keys, the Integrations page will be improved to make copying API keys simpler.
Statistics
iThenticate v2 administrators will also notice some improvements to the Statistics page. Usage data should load faster and will be sortable by user group. They will also be able to generate large usage reports of over 100k submissions.
Paper lookup
The Paper lookup will allow iThenticate v2 account administrators to find submissions that have been made from any integration connected to their iThenticate v2 account. They can be found by searching the paper ID (or oid number) of the submission.
Please note: the ability to search for submissions by the user’s name is available for manuscripts submitted via the iThenticate v2 website only and not for papers submitted via an integration.
New password requirements
To improve the security of users’ accounts, new password requirements will be introduced, including a minimum of 8 symbols, 1 special symbol, 1 upper case letter, and 1 number.
Next in iThenticate v2
Turnitin, who produce iThenticate, are currently working on a number of new features and developments including an improved similarity report, paraphrase and AI writing detection. A detailed timeline is not yet available but we’ll be updating you on these new developments in the coming months.
✏️ Do get in touch via support@crossref.org if you have any questions about iThenticate v1 or v2 or start a discussion by commenting on this post below.
