This year, metadata development is one of our key priorities and we’re making a start with the release of version 5.4.0 of our input schema with some long-awaited changes. This is the first in what will be a series of metadata schema updates.
What is in this update?
Publication typing for citations
This is fairly simple; we’ve added a ‘type’ attribute to the citations members supply. This means you can identify a journal article citation as a journal article, but more importantly, you can identify a dataset, software, blog post, or other citation that may not have an identifier assigned to it. This makes it easier for the many thousands of metadata users to connect these citations to identifiers. We know many publishers, particularly journal publishers, do collect this information already and will consider making this change to deposit citation types with their records.
Every year we release metadata for the full corpus of records registered with us, which can be downloaded for free in a single compressed file. This is one way in which we fulfil our mission to make metadata freely and widely available. By including the metadata of over 165 million research outputs from over 20,000 members worldwide and making them available in a standard format, we streamline access to metadata about scholarly objects such as journal articles, books, conference papers, preprints, research grants, standards, datasets, reports, blogs, and more.
Today, we’re delighted to let you know that Crossref members can now use ROR IDs to identify funders in any place where you currently use Funder IDs in your metadata. Funder IDs remain available, but this change allows publishers, service providers, and funders to streamline workflows and introduce efficiencies by using a single open identifier for both researcher affiliations and funding organizations.
As you probably know, the Research Organization Registry (ROR) is a global, community-led, carefully curated registry of open persistent identifiers for research organisations, including funding organisations. It’s a joint initiative led by the California Digital Library, Datacite and Crossref launched in 2019 that fulfills the long-standing need for an open organisation identifier.
We began our Global Equitable Membership (GEM) Program to provide greater membership equitability and accessibility to organizations in the world’s least economically advantaged countries. Eligibility for the program is based on a member’s country; our list of countries is predominantly based on the International Development Association (IDA). Eligible members pay no membership or content registration fees. The list undergoes periodic reviews, as countries may be added or removed over time as economic situations change.
Slate of 2017 board candidates announced, and it’s going to be exciting
Crossref is always evolving and the board knows it must evolve with us so we can continue to provide the right kind of services and support for you, as members of the research community.
This year two things happened for the first time: we used our updated bylaws see article VII, section 2 agreed by the board last year, to allow more candidates than available seats; and secondly, to issue an open call for expressions of interest. Many members of the current board felt it was vital to move to this more transparent process.
With Crossref developing new services for new types of members at a rapid pace, it’s an exciting time to be on the board of directors. With 25 expressions of interest it seems we’re not the only ones who think so!
From these 25 applications, the Nominating Committee has proposed the following nine candidates to fill the six seats open for election to our board of directors:
American Institute of Physics (AIP), Jason Wilde, USA F1000 Research, Liz Allen, UK Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), Gerry Grenier, USA The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), Vincent Cassidy, UK Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press (MIT Press), Amy Brand, USA OpenEdition, Marin Dacos, France SciELO, Abel Packer, Brazil SPIE, Eric Pepper, USA Vilnius Gediminas Technical University Press (VGTU Press), Eleonora Dagiene, Lithuania
Candidates were chosen based on the following criteria:
That board representation should be reflective of membership
A balance of types and sizes of organizations
That all committee choices and recommendations were unanimous
You can be part of this important process, by voting in the election
If your organization is a member of Crossref on September 15 2017, you are eligible to vote when voting opens on September 28 (affiliates, however, are not eligible to vote).
How can you vote?
On September 28, your organization’s designated voting contact will receive an email with a link to the formal Notice of Meeting and Proxy Form with concise instructions on how to vote. An additional email will be sent with a username and password along with a link to our online voting platform. It is important to make sure your voting contact is up-to-date.
Want to add your voice?
We are accepting independent nominations until 7 November 2017. Organizations interested in standing as an independent candidate should contact me by this date with the endorsements of ten other Crossref members.
The election itself will be held at LIVE17 Singapore, our annual meeting, on 14 November 2017. We hope you’ll be there to hear the results.
