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.
We are making a change to section 9b of the standard Crossref membership agreement which will come into effect on January 1, 2018. This will not change how members register content, nor will it affect membership fees in any way. The new 2018 agreement is on our website, and the exact wording changes are highlighted below. The new membership agreement will automatically replace the previous version from January 1, 2018 and members will not need to sign a new agreement.
What’s changing?
At its July meeting the Crossref board unanimously approved recommendations from the Membership and Fees Committee to update Crossref’s metadata delivery offerings. One of the recommendations was to remove the option for case-by-case opt outs of metadata delivery through the OAI-PMH channel used for Enhanced Crossref Metadata Services.
This opt-out was only used by a small number of our members (around 40 of nearly 9,000), who have been contacted directly. This means that for the vast majority of members there is no change in how Crossref makes their metadata available but we wanted to make everyone aware of the change to the membership agreement.
So, as is currently the case, all metadata registered with Crossref is available via all the Metadata APIs under an appropriate agreement with the user or terms and conditions for the service. The one exception to this is how references are distributed - we will contact members next week about the options for references.
Why are we making this change?
Our metadata services have become very popular with users of all kinds throughout scholarly communications–including search and discovery platforms, libraries, other publishers, reference managers, sharing services, and analytics providers. More and better metadata means more and better discoverability of publisher content.
The change also brings this service into line with our mission to improve scholarly communications through quality metadata and related infrastructure services, removing the need for bilateral agreements between publishers and third parties.
Many members complained when we contacted them about opt-outs whenever a new OAI-PMH user came on board. It is better for our members and for our staff if there is a common standard across the board.
Changes to 2018 membership agreement
9) Sharing of Metadata by PILA
a) Local Hosting. [no change]
b) Other Metadata Services. Subject to compliance by the entity receiving the Metadata and Digital Identifiers with the terms and conditions set forth in a separate agreement betweenestablished by PILA for the particular service through which access is provided, and the entity receiving the Metadata and Digital Identifiers, PILA may licenseauthorize third parties to receive and use bulk deliveries of Metadata and Digital Identifiers from the PILA System from members who have chosen to participate in Metadata Services, which PILA shall provide directly to such third parties. At least thirty (30) days prior to making such Metadata delivery PILA will notify each PILA Member whose Metadata and Digital Identifiers are intended to be included in such delivery of the anticipated delivery date, the identity of the third party and the purpose for which the delivery is being made. Metadata and Digital Identifiers belonging to any PILA Member who notifies PILA in writing prior to the specified delivery date of its desire to be excluded from such delivery will be excluded or removed from such delivery.
