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 Crossref Nominating Committee is inviting expressions of interest to serve on the Board as it begins its consideration of a slate for the November 2019 election.
The board’s purpose is to provide strategic and financial oversight and counsel to the Executive Director and the staff leadership team, with the key responsibilities being:
Setting the strategic direction for the organization;
Providing financial oversight; and
Approving new policies and services.
The Board tends to review the strategic direction every few years, taking a landscape view of the scholarly communications community and trends that may affect Crossref’s mission. In July 2017, the board and staff came up with four strategic themes and these have been developed into an organization-wide roadmap.
The board votes on any new policy or service that staff and committees propose if it is a departure from normal practice for Crossref.Some of the recent things the board has approved include:
Approval of all the new terms of membership; broadening of the membership eligibility criteria to include non-publishers.
Involvement in the ROR.org initiative including community outreach, technical prototyping, and helping to explore governance options.
Approval of a proposal for funders to join at a reduced annual fee; the registration of DOIs for research grants.
Allocating $50,000 USD of the operating budget to research the community’s level of interest in a distributed usage service.
Specifying the Board makeup to include equal numbers of small and large members; reframing the election processes.
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 may send your named alternate as your proxy or 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 experience on a governing board (as opposed to an operational board) and 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 can complete and submit the expression of interest form with both your organization’s statement and your personal statement before 21 May 2019.
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 2019, 4 large and 1 small.
The slate will be decided by the Nominating Committee and interested parties will be informed if they have made the slate by July 15, 2019.
The election opens online in September 2019 and voting is done by proxy online, results will be announced at the annual business meeting during ‘Crossref LIVE19’ on 13th November 2019 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Election materials and instructions for voting will be available online to all Crossref members in September 2019.
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 might exceed the number of open seats) is based on the quality of the expressions of interest and the nominating committee’s review of the candidates in light of the board’s directive of maintaining an appropriately balanced and representative board. The nominating committee will prioritize maintaining representation of members having both commercial and non-commercial business models, in addition to continuing to seek balance across factors such as gender, ethnic and racial background, geography, and sector.
The Board voted in March 2019 that balance according to size (based on revenue tier) will be achieved by a 2019 slate consisting of one revenue tier 1 seat (small) and 4 revenue 2 seats (large), and a 2020 slate consisting of 4 revenue tier 1 seats and 2 revenue tier 2 seats (see Crossref’s amended Bylaws on the Crossref website).
The Committee is made up of three board members not up for election, and two non-board members. The current Nominating Committee members are:
Jasper Simons, APA (Chair);
Scott Delman ACM;
Catherine Mitchell, CDL;
Vincent Cassidy, The Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET); and
