Event Data

When someone links their data online, or mentions research on a social media site, we capture that event and make it available for anyone to use in their own way. We provide the unprocessed data—you decide how to use it.

Event Data is a set of APIs that captures and records events that occur all over the web. Members register content with us, and we keep track of it via its DOI (and, where possible, landing page URL), so we can find out where it’s been shared, linked, bookmarked, referenced or commented on. These ‘events’ can occur in a range of different environments - from social sites like Twitter, to reference sites like Wikipedia. Event Data captures and records these events to give a fuller picture of how research connects - providing open, transparent, and traceable information about the provenance and context of every event.

How Event Data works

When someone links their data online, or mentions research on, for example, Twitter, Wikipedia, or Reddit, we capture that event and make it available for anyone to use in their own way. We provide the unprocessed data—you decide how to use it. This is key, as people have different questions to answer, different businesses, and different interpretations. For example, the same data, within the framework of your organization, can have its own unique meaning: does a tweet hold the same value as a retweet for you? Why should Crossref decide? You know which data points are meaningful for you. You also might want to build or use a tool to process, evaluate, or visualize the data.

Where the data comes from

The events in our service are mostly collected and curated by us from the data sources, but some are produced by our partners. Crossref Event Data currently contains events from the following data sources:

Who is Event Data for?

To use Event Data, you do not need to be a member. Event Data is for anyone who wants to build tools to enable their organization to see ‘a fuller picture’ - or focus on any specific pixel of that picture. For example, Event Data could be used to map the intensity and location of discussion around an item of research, to develop measurements for, evaluate, and interpret research engagement or perhaps to track reach, and could be used by:

• Publishers and publishing platforms can analyze and interpret our data collection and can use the event records to undertake metric-lead analysis to help drive business needs
• Service providers can enrich, analyze, interpret and report via their own tools
• Bibliometricians can use as the underlying data for their research
• Journal editors can use our records to quickly find reviewers based on publication network analysis, identify new areas to grow author submissions and track the reach of submissions selected for publication. In addition, our records can track the full-scope of article dissemination and gain a better understanding of how the publications they manage compare to each other
• Funders can use the data to track the dissemination and usage of the research they funded - outside of the scholarly literature
• Anyone interested in evaluating, using, and visualizing information provided in Event Data.

Agreement and fees for Event Data

Event Data is a public API, giving access to raw data, and there are no fees. In the future we will introduce a service-based offering with additional features and benefits. Learn more about the Event Data terms.

Please contact us with any questions or ideas to discuss.

How to participate in Event Data

Jump on and explore where you can go with Event Data, and what product or service you might want to build with it. Learn more in our comprehensive documentation which includes example queries.