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.
The annual board election is a very important event for Crossref and its members. The board of directors, comprising 16 member organizations, governs Crossref, sets its strategic direction and makes sure that we fulfill our mission. Our members elect the board - its “one member one vote” - and we like to see as many members as possible voting. We are very pleased to announce the 2019 election slate - we have a great set of candidates and an update to the ByLaws addressing the composition of the slate to ensure that the board continues to be representative of our membership.
2019 Election Slate
Crossref received 52 expressions of interest this year through the link that was sent out via our blog, and over 100 emails from members interested in serving on our Board. It is very exciting to see that our members want to be involved.
In March of this year, the Board made a motion per the recommendation of an adhoc Governance Committee. It was resolves to “provide the following guidance to the Nominating Committee: To achieve balance between revenue tiers by proposing a 2019 slate consisting of one Revenue Tier 1 seat and four Revenue tier 2 seats, and a 2020 slate consisting of four Revenue Tier 1 seats and two Revenue Tier 2 seats; thereby resulting in, as nearly as practicable, an equal balance between board members representing Revenue Tier 1 and Revenue Tier 2 (as those terms are defined in Crossref’s ByLaws below).”
Section 2. Nominating Committee. The Board shall appoint a Nominating Committee of five (5) members, each of whom shall be either a Director or the designated representative of a member that is not represented on the Board, whose duty it shall be to nominate candidates for Directors to be elected at the next annual election. The Nominating Committee shall designate a slate of candidates for each election that is at least equal in number to the number of Directors to be elected at such election. Each such slate will be comprised such that, as nearly as practicable, one-half of the resulting Board shall be comprised of Directors designated by Members then representing Revenue Tier 1; and one-half of the resulting Board shall be comprised of Directors designated by Members then representing Revenue Tier 2. “Revenue Tier 1” means all consecutive membership dues categories, starting with the lowest dues category, that, when taken together, aggregate, as nearly as possible, to fifty percent (50%) of Crossref’s annual revenue. “Revenue Tier 2” means all membership dues categories above Revenue Tier 1. The Nominating Committee shall notify the Secretary in writing, at least twenty (20) days before the date of the annual meeting, of the names of such candidates, and the Secretary, except as herein otherwise provided, shall transmit a copy thereof to the last recorded address of each member of record simultaneously with the notice of the meeting.
The Committee and the Board has worked very hard to balance the Board, so you will see two categories on the ballot, large and small.
The 2019 slate includes: seven candidates for five available seats
Candidate organizations, in alphabetical order, for the Small category (1 seat available):
eLife, Melissa Harrison
The Royal Society, Stuart Taylor
Candidate organizations, in alphabetical order, for the Large category (4 seats available):
You can be part of this important process, by voting in the election
If your organization is a voting member in good standing of Crossref as of September 13, 2019, you are eligible to vote when voting opens on September 27, 2019.
How can you vote?
On September 27, 2019, your organization’s designated voting contact will receive an email with the Formal Notice of Meeting and Proxy Form with concise instructions on how to vote. You will also receive a user name and password with a link to our voting platform.
The election results will be announced at LIVE19 Amsterdam on November 13, 2019.
