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.
Do you want to effect change for the scholarly community?
The Crossref Nominating Committee is inviting expressions of interest to serve on the Board as it begins its consideration of a slate for the November 2018 election.
The key responsibilities of the Board are:
Setting the strategic direction for the organization;
Providing financial oversight; and
Approving new policies and services.
Some of the decisions the board has made in recent years include:
Introduction of the Metadata APIs Plus service (to provide a paid-for premium service for machine access to metadata);
Updating the policy on open references (to increase links so that more readers can access content);
Establishing the OI Project (to create a persistent Organization Identifier);
Approval to develop Event Data (which will track online activity from multiple sources).
What is expected of a Crossref Board member?
Board members should be able to attend all board meetings, which occur three times a year in different parts of the world. If you are unable to attend in person you must be able to attend via telephone.
Board members must:
be familiar with the three key responsibilities listed above,
actively participate and contribute towards discussions, and
read the board documents and materials provided, prior to attending meetings.
How to submit an expression of interest to serve on the Board
We are seeking people who know about scholarly communications and would like to be part of our future. If you have a vision for the international Crossref community, we are interested in hearing from you.
If you are a Crossref member, are eligible to vote, and would like to be considered, you should complete and submit the expression of interest form with both your organization’s statement and your personal statement before 18 May 2018.
It is important to note it is your organization who is the Crossref member—and therefore the seat will belong to your organization.
About the election and our Board
We have a principle of “one member, one vote”; our board comprises a cross-section of members and it doesn’t matter how big or small you are, every member gets a single vote. Board terms are three years, and one third of the Board is eligible for election every year. There are five seats up for election in 2018.
The election opens online in September 2018 and voting is done by proxy online, or in person, at the annual business meeting during ‘Crossref LIVE18’ on 13th November 2018 in Toronto, Canada. Election materials and instructions for voting will be available to all Crossref members online in September 2018.
The role of the Nominating Committee
The Nominating Committee meets to discuss change, process, criteria, and potential candidates, ensuring a fair representation of membership. The Nominating Committee is charged with selecting a slate of candidates for election from those who have expressed an interest.
The selection of the slate (which is likely to exceed the number of open seats) is based on the quality of the expressions of interest and maintaining the balance and diversity of the board—especially in areas of organizational size, gender, geography and sector.
The Committee is made up of three board members not up for election, and two non-board members. The current Nominating Committee members are:
Mark Patterson, eLife (Chair);
Chris Shillum, Elsevier;
Amy Brand, MIT Press;
Vincent Cassidy, The Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET); and
Claire Moulton, The Company of Biologists.
Our board needs to be stay truly representative of Crossref’s global and diverse membership of organizations who publish. Please submit your statements of interest or reply to me with any questions to me at lhart@crossref.org.
