2020 wasn’t all bad. In April of last year, we released our first public data file. Though Crossref metadata is always openly available––and our board recently cemented this by voting to adopt the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI)––we’ve decided to release an updated file. This will provide a more efficient way to get such a large volume of records. The file (JSON records, 102.6GB) is now available, with thanks once again to Academic Torrents.
Our colleague and friend, Kirsty Meddings, passed away peacefully on 10th December at home with her family, after a sudden and aggressive cancer. She was a huge part of Crossref, our culture, and our lives for the last twelve years.
Kirsty Meddings is a name that almost everyone in scholarly publishing knows; she was part of a generation of Oxford women in publishing technology who have progressed through the industry, adapted to its changes, spotted new opportunities, and supported each other throughout.
Crossref has supported depositing metadata for preprints since 2016 and peer reviews since 2018. Now we are putting the two together, in fact we will permit peer reviews to be registered for any content type.
2020 has been a very challenging year, and we can all agree that everyone needs a break. Crossref will be providing very limited technical and membership support from 21st December to 3rd January to allow our staff to rest and recharge. We’ll be back on January 4th raring to answer your questions. Amanda explains more about why we made this decision.
This method 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 to this form.
Select the type of content you want to register: journal, book, conference proceedings, report, dissertation, or NLM file
Enter the appropriate information for the type of content you selected. Be sure to enter all available metadata for each item you register.
Journals: deposit a journal-level DOI only or DOIs for each article within a given issue. Only one issue can be deposited at a time.
Books: register both book- and chapter-level information. 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.
For conference proceedings, enter event and conference paper information. Select Add Papers to enter metadata for conference papers.
For reports: select Submit Report DOI to deposit a single report DOI, or select Add Content Item if the report contains multiple chapters or papers.
For dissertations: complete the fields and click Submit dissertation.
NLM/JATS upload: to upload an XML file built according to the NLM or JATS document type definition (DTD) publishing tag set, select NLM file, use the Browse function to locate NLM XML file, and enter username, password, contact, and DOI information. Click Upload NLM Data to submit.
If your XML contains <article-id pub-id-type="doi"> you do not need to enter a DOI in the form.
If the XML contains <self-uri> and that URI contains the URL you intend to register with your DOI, you do not need to enter a URL.
Enter your Crossref username, password, and email address, and select Deposit. Please ensure this is a valid email address, as we’ll use it to send you your submission log.
When you’ve completed step 4, your submission is added to our submission queue. When we have processed your file we’ll send you a log via email (to the address you gave us in step 4 above). 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, 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.
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, licence metadata, funding and licence metadata together, or Similarity Check URLs.
Under data type selection, choose supplemental metadata upload
Under csv file information, click Browse and select your .csv file for upload
Enter your Crossref username and password in the appropriate fields
Enter your email address in the appropriate field. This is the email address to which your submission log will be sent
Click submit
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 submitted to the Crossref system. 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 5,000 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.
