2025 June 17
Evolving the preprint evaluation world with Sciety
This post is based on an interview with Sciety team at eLife.
Reference linking enables researchers to follow a link from the reference list to other full-text documents, helping them to make connections and discover new things.
To link references, you don’t need to be a Crossref member. Reference linking means including Crossref DOIs (displayed as URLs) in the reference lists that you provide in your own published work. This enables researchers to follow a link from a reference list to the current landing page for that referenced work. And because it’s a DOI rather than just a link, it will remain persistent.
So, instead of just including the reference…
Soleimani N, Mohabati Mobarez A, Farhangi B. Cloning, expression and purification flagellar sheath adhesion of Helicobacter pylori in Escherichia coli host as a vaccination target. Clin Exp Vaccine Res. 2016 Jan;5(1):19-25.
…you should also display the DOI link:
Soleimani N, Mohabati Mobarez A, Farhangi B. Cloning, expression and purification flagellar sheath adhesion of Helicobacter pylori in Escherichia coli host as a vaccination target. Clin Exp Vaccine Res. 2016 Jan;5(1):19-25. https://doi.org/10.7774/cevr.2016.5.1.19
Because Crossref is all about rallying the scholarly community to work together, reference linking is an obligation for all Crossref members and for all ‘current’ resources (published during this and the two previous years). It is also encouraged for for backfile resources (published longer ago than current resources).
Watch the introductory reference linking animation in your language:
Persistent links enhance scholarly communications. Reference linking offers important benefits:
There’s no charge for reference linking but it is an obligation of membership. Reference linking is required for all Crossref members and for all current resources. We’d encourage you to also add reference linking for backfile records too.
Download the reference linking factsheet, and explore factsheets for other Crossref services and in different languages.
Note that reference linking is not the same as registering references - learn more about the differences.
To link references, you do not need to be a member, but reference linking is an obligation for Crossref members. When your organization becomes a Crossref member, look up the DOIs for your references, and add the DOI (as a URL) to reference lists for your records.
See how you can find other members DOIs for your reference list in our documentation.
Crossref members can look up the DOIs for their references, and add the links to their articles’ reference lists. Our website provides a simple text tool for manual, low volume querying, and a form for uploading a small number of reference lists as .txt files to find their DOIs (if available). However, the preferred method for most members is via XML API for individual or batch query requests.