Latest blog posts
Isaac Farley
2021 March 08

Stepping up our deposit processing game

Some of you who have submitted content to us during the first two months of 2021 may have experienced content registration delays. We noticed; you did, too. The time between us receiving XML from members, to the content being registered with us and the DOI resolving to the correct resolution URL, is usually a matter of minutes. Some submissions take longer - for example, book registrations with large reference lists, or very large files from larger publishers can take up to 24 to 48 hours to process.

...Find out more
Vanessa Fairhurst
2021 February 11

Discuss all things metadata in our new community forum

TL;DR: We have a Community Forum (yay!), you can come and join it here: community.crossref.org. Community is fundamental to us at Crossref, we wouldn’t be where we are or achieve the great things we do without the involvement of you, our diverse and engaged members and users. Crossref was founded as a collaboration of publishers with the shared goal of making links between research outputs easier, building a foundational infrastructure making research easier to find, cite, link, assess, and re-use.

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Martyn Rittman
2021 February 01

Event Data: A Plan of Action

Event Data uncovers links between Crossref-registered DOIs and diverse places where they are mentioned across the internet. Whereas a citation links one research article to another, events are a way to create links to locations such as news articles, data sets, Wikipedia entries, and social media mentions. We’ve collected events for several years and make them openly available via an API for anyone to access, as well as creating open logs of how we found each event.

...Find out more
Jennifer Kemp
2021 January 19

New public data file: 120+ million metadata records

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.

...Find out more
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Documentation

OpenURL

Our OpenURL service is used primarily by library link resolvers but can also be used to look up metadata records. Please note that OpenURL retrieval includes only bibliographic metadata.

On this page, learn more about:

OpenURL access

Access to the OpenURL service is free, but does require that you identify yourself.

  • Crossref members and non-members: use your email address to identify yourself. You don’t need to register this with us in advance, but you do need to include it in your query.
  • Librarians: if you need to use OpenURL with your library link resolver and that system requires a username and password, we can provide you with Crossref account credentials. Learn more about metadata retrieval for librarians (where you can also request your credentials).

Access using an email address

You need to include your email address in the pid parameter of the OpenURL request. Note that pid is not the same as PID (persistent identifier, such as a DOI or an ORCID iD).

For interfaces that require a key, your email address is your key.

Use the format below but include your own email address instead of name@someplace.com:

https://doi.crossref.org/openurl?pid=name@someplace.com&aulast=Maas%20LRM&title= JOURNAL%20OF%20PHYSICAL%20OCEANOGRAPHY&volume=32&issue=3&spage=870&date=2002

Log in to the library link resolver using the Crossref account credentials we provided.

OpenURL metadata queries

The OpenURL query interface uses metadata to identify a matching DOI, and redirects the user to the target of the DOI.

For example, this query contains an author name, a journal title, volume, issue, first page, and publication year:

https://doi.crossref.org/openurl?pid=email@address.com&aulast=Maas%20LRM&title= JOURNAL%20OF%20PHYSICAL%20OCEANOGRAPHY&volume=32&issue=3&spage=870&date=2002

The OpenURL query interface matches the query with a metadata record and redirects the user to the relevant persistent identifier landing page at https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0485(2002)032<0870:CT>2.0.CO;2.

The OpenURL Query Interface can accept these parameters:

Citation metadata parameters

  • issn
  • title (journal title)
  • aulast (family name, preferably of first author)
  • volume
  • issue
  • spage (first page)
  • date (publication year YYYY)
  • stitle (short title, which may be supplied as an alternative to title)

Other parameters

  • pid (your email address). Note: pid (personal id) is different from PID (persistent identifier)
  • redirect (set to false to return the DOI in XML format instead of redirecting to the target URL. The default is true)
  • multihit (set to true to return DOIs for more than one content item if the Crossref system does not find an exact match. The default is false)
  • format (set to unixref to return metadata in UNIXREF format)

OpenURL results

By default, an OpenURL match will direct the user to the landing page registered for the matched metadata record.

In most instances, only a single identifier will be returned. If more than one identifier is returned, the user will be directed to a list of all available DOIs. For example, the query:

https://www.crossref.org/openurl?pid=email@address.com&title=Science&aulast=Fernández&date=2009

will return multiple results.

Retrieving metadata

OpenURL may be used to retrieve metadata records by setting the redirect parameter to “false”. By default an OpenURL response uses the XSD XML format. The UNIXREF format may be requested by setting the format parameter to “unixref”.

Example metadata queries

This query will return an XSD-formatted XML metadata record:

https://doi.crossref.org/openurl?issn=03770273&aulast=Walker&volume=54&spage=117&date=1983**&redirect=false**&pid=email@address.com

There are multiple matches for this query, when multihit=true the metadata record is returned for all results:

https://doi.crossref.org/openurl?issn=03603016&volume=54&issue=2&spage=215&date=2002&multihit=true&pid=email@address.com

Setting multihit=exact will return no matches:

https://doi.crossref.org/openurl?issn=03603016&volume=54&issue=2&spage=215&date=2002&multihit=exact&pid=support@crossref.org

Example DOI queries

Crossref supports DOI queries formatted as OpenURL version 0.1 requests:

Open URL query

https://doi.crossref.org/openurl/?pid=email@address.com&id=doi:10.1103/PhysRev.47.777&noredirect=true

Crossref query

https://doi.crossref.org/servlet/query?pid=email@address.com&id=10.1006/jmbi.2000.4282

Like metadata queries, DOI query results are returned in XML format.

NISO 0.1 or 1.0 URLs

Crossref also supports NISO 0.1 and 1.0 URLs as well as some common deviations. In general it supports the San Antonio Profile #1, including in-line, by-value, and by-reference. In the presence of a url_ver= Z39.88-2004 parameter this service will operate on a info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx context format with referent formats info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal or info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:book.

Simple reverse lookup

https://doi.crossref.org/openurl?pid=email@address.com&url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:doi/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777

Retrieve metadata for a DOI

https://doi.crossref.org/openurl?pid=email@address.com&url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:doi/10.1361/15477020418786&noredirect=true

A journal article lookup

https://doi.crossref.org/openurl?pid=email@address.com&url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.atitle=Isolation of a common receptor for coxsackie B&rft.jtitle=Science&rft.aulast=Bergelson&rft.auinit=J&rft.date=1997&rft.volume=275&rft.spage=1320&rft.epage=1323

Page owner: Rachael Lammey   |   Last updated 2020-April-08