The integrity of the scholarly record is an essential aspect of research integrity. Every initiative and service that we have launched since our founding has been focused on documenting and clarifying the scholarly record in an open, machine-actionable and scalable form. All of this has been done to make it easier for the community to assess the trustworthiness of scholarly outputs. Now that the scholarly record itself has evolved beyond the published outputs at the end of the research process – to include both the elements of that process and its aftermath – preserving its integrity poses new challenges that we strive to meet… we are reaching out to the community to help inform these efforts.
I’m pleased to share the 2022 board election slate. Crossref’s Nominating Committee received 40 submissions from members worldwide to fill five open board seats.
We maintain a balance of eight large member seats and eight small member seats. A member’s size is determined based on the membership fee tier they pay. We look at how our total revenue is generated across the membership tiers and split it down the middle. Like last year, about half of our revenue came from members in the tiers $0 - $1,650, and the other half came from members in tiers $3,900 - $50,000.
Our entire community – members, metadata users, service providers, community organizations and researchers – create and/or use DOIs in some way so making them more accessible is a worthy and overdue effort.
For the first time in five years and only the second time ever, we are recommending some changes to our DOI display guidelines (the changes aren’t really for display but more on that below). We don’t take such changes lightly, because we know it means updating established workflows.
I’m delighted to say that Martin Paul Eve will be joining Crossref as a Principal R&D Developer starting in January 2023.
As a Professor of Literature, Technology, and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London- Martin has always worked on issues relating to metadata and scholarly infrastructure. In joining the Crossref R&D group, Martin can focus full-time on helping us design and build a new generation of services and tools to help the research community navigate and make sense of the scholarly record.
The web deposit form is suitable for making small numbers of deposits, and you do not need any knowledge of XML to use it. You can use this form to deposit metadata for journals, books, conference proceedings, reports, and dissertations. You can also upload NLM or JATS-formatted XML using this form.
How to use the web deposit form to register your content
Step one: Select your content type
Start at the web deposit form and select the type of content you want to register: journal, book, conference proceedings, report or dissertation. Different fields will appear depending on what you’ve chosen.
Step two: Add the content you want to register
Journals
You can deposit a journal-level DOI only or DOIs for each article within a given issue.
Register DOIs for articles - you can register articles for up to one issue in any deposit. On the first screen, enter information for the relevant journal or issue, then click add articles. After you’ve added information for each article, click on Add another article to register the next article. When you are done, click Finish.
Register a journal-level DOI only - on the first screen, enter the information for the relevant journal or issue and click Submit journal/issue DOI.
Please note: when you register your first item, be really careful about the journal title you enter - this will create a journal title record and any future submissions will have to match this. Your journal title doesn’t have to match the title in the ISSN portal, but if you do want it to match, make sure to check what this is before you register your first item.
Books
You can register both book- and chapter-level information. Add you content and select Submit Book DOI to deposit a title-level DOI, or select Add Chapters to enter metadata for chapters attached to the book being registered. For series and sets, only one volume can be registered at a time.
Conference proceedings
Enter event and conference paper information. Select Add Papers to enter metadata for conference papers.
Reports
Select Submit Report DOI to deposit a single report DOI, or select Add Content Item if the report contains multiple chapters or papers.
Dissertations
Complete the fields and click Submit dissertation.
Step three: Login and submit your content
Login with your Crossref account credentials, and then add the email address that should receive the submission log email. Even if your login username is your email address, you still need to add an email address to receive the submission log email. It can be the same or different from the email you used as your login username. Finally, click Deposit.
Your submission is then added to our submission queue. When we’ve processed your file we’ll send you a log via email (to the address you gave us in step three). You must review this log to make sure your content was registered successfully. Learn more about error and warning messages.
We also send you a copy of the XML that has been generated by the web deposit form. This XML is just for your records - you don’t need to do anything with it. If changes or corrections need to be made to your metadata record, you can edit and submit the XML instead of re-entering your metadata into the form. If you do edit the XML, be sure to increment the value in the <timestamp> field to ensure a successful update.
Web deposit form limitations and how to work around them
There are some metadata elements that you can’t currently register as part of your initial deposit in the web deposit form. However, you can add many of these to an existing deposit later on, using our other tools. Here’s a list of the elements that can’t currently be included in your initial deposit with the web deposit form, and your options for adding them later:
archive locations, and article numbers or IDs can’t be registered using the web deposit form.
Funding and license information, Similarity Check URLs, STM-article sharing framework (stm-asf) license information, and text and data mining URLs can be added to existing DOIs in bulk using a supplemental metadata upload.
References: use Simple Text Query to match and deposit references to existing DOIs.
How to use the web deposit form to upload a JATS or NLM file
You can use the web deposit form to upload an XML file built according to the NLM or JATS document type definition (DTD) publishing tag set. Find out more.
How to use the web deposit form for supplemental metadata upload using a .csv file
Supplemental metadata upload enables members to add metadata elements to existing DOIs in bulk by uploading a .csv file via the web deposit form. You can use it to add funding metadata, license metadata, funding and license metadata together, Similarity Check URLs, or STM-article sharing framework (stm-asf) license metadata.
Click the choose file button next to csv file information and select your .csv file for upload
Enter the email address that should receive the submission log email
Click upload csv data
Some initial validation relating to formatting is performed upon upload. Incomplete or incorrect files will return an error message, and will not be deposited. If the file passes the initial validation, it will be converted to XML, and registered with us. Additional validation is performed upon deposit.
You will receive a submission log when your deposit is complete. Please review the log to be sure your DOIs have been updated successfully.
Please contact us with questions or comments about your .csv upload. If you are reporting problems with a .csv upload, please attach the .csv file to your support request.
Specifications for all .csv files
Files submitted for supplemental metadata upload using a .csv file must comply with these specifications:
Don’t use commas (,) or quotation marks (") within a column value
Dates must be in the format: YYYY-MM-DD
If metadata is not available for an item, leave the cell blank. If an entire column is not populated, you may omit it. Do not enter placeholders such as n/a or -, as this will cause your deposit to fail, or cause incorrect metadata to be attached to a DOI
Files may be up to 45 MB in size. We automatically split the file into batches of 4,000 DOIs for processing. We send you two emails for each batch: a submission log, and a copy of the submitted XML, so uploading a large file may result in many emails.
<funder_name>: name of the funding agency as it appears in the Funder Registry. Learn more about accessing the Funder Registry.
<funder_identifier>: funding agency identifier in the form of a DOI
<award_number>: grant number or other fund identifier
If a DOI has multiple funders, the DOI must be repeated for each funder. We recommend that all available metadata is deposited. If a piece of funding metadata is not available (for example, a grant number) the field should be left blank.
Prepare your .csv file for funding and license metadata
Funding and license metadata may be combined into a single file. The order is important: please include columns in the order listed below (*=required):
DOI: the DOI whose metadata is being updated*
<funder_name>: name of the funding agency* as it appears in the Funder Registry. Learn more about accessing the Funder Registry
<funder_identifier>: funding agency identifier in the form of a DOI*
<award_number>: grant number or other fund identifier*
<license_ref>: license URL
<license_ref applies_to="vor">: license URL for version of record
<vor_lic_start_date>: start date of version of record license
<license_ref applies_to="am">: license URL for accepted manuscript
<am_lic_start_date>: start date of accepted manuscript license
<license_ref applies_to="tdm">: license URL for accepted manuscript
<tdm_lic_start_date>: start date of accepted manuscript license
<resource content_version="vor">: item URL for version of record
<resource content_version="vor" mime_type="?">: item URL for version of record with MIME type
<resource content_version="am">: item URL for author manuscript with MIME type
<resource content_version="am" mime_type="?">: item URL for author manuscript with MIME type
Open your file using spreadsheet software (such as MS Excel). Your file should contain two columns with the headings DOI and <item crawler="iParadigms">, where DOI is the DOI being updated and <item crawler="iParadigms"> is the URL being submitted for Similarity Check indexing. Here is an example:
Replace the example DOIs (10.5555/test1) and URLs (https://www.yoururl.com/pdf1) with your DOIs and URLs.
Be sure to save the file as .csv and not as .xlsx (or any other file type)
Some spreadsheet programs add additional quotation marks to the column headers, such as "DOI" or "<item crawler="iParadigms">". If your upload is not successful, please open your file in a text editor, and make sure the top line of the file is simply: DOI or <item crawler="iParadigms">. Edit if necessary, and resubmit.
Prepare your .csv file for STM-article sharing framework (stm-asf) license metadata
As of 2022, Crossref supports registration of STM-article sharing framework (stm-asf) license metadata. The .csv file may contain these headings (*=required):
DOI: the DOI whose metadata is being updated*
<license_ref applies_to="stm-asf">: stm-asf license URL for version of record
<stm-asf_lic_start_date>: start date of version of record license
<license_ref applies_to="am">: license URL for accepted manuscript
<am_lic_start_date>: start date of accepted manuscript license
<license_ref applies_to="tdm">: license URL for accepted manuscript
<tdm_lic_start_date>: start date of accepted manuscript license
<resource content_version="vor">: item URL for version of record
<resource content_version="vor" mime_type="?">: item URL for version of record with MIME type
<resource content_version="am">: item URL for author manuscript with MIME type
<resource content_version="am" mime_type="?">: item URL for author manuscript with MIME type
<resource>: item URL with no version type and with MIME type
<resource mime_type="?">: item URL with no version type
