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.
But actually, sometimes it is about the money. As a not-for-profit membership organization that is obsessed with persistence, we have a duty to remain sustainable and manage our finances in a responsible way. Our annual audit is incredibly thorough, and our outside auditors and Board-based Audit committee consistently report that we’re in good shape.
Our Membership & Fees committee regularly reviews both membership fees and Content Registration fees for a growing range of research outputs. Together with our staff, the Board regularly reviews financial projections that inform our budgeting process and approve our budget each year.
Financial sustainability means the persistence of our infrastructure and services
We run a tight ship here at Crossref. We have to. So it’s not ideal when we have to chase members and users for late payments, but it’s an important part of keeping the organization afloat, and keeping our dedicated service to scholarly communications running. And that’s my job at Crossref.
Working here for over six years now, I’ve seen a lot of development in our finance department. We strive as a team to always improve our communication with members and users to deliver the best ‘customer’ experience. To do this, we are always tweaking our processes to improve efficiency and accuracy, and welcome all feedback.
How the invoice schedule works
Our annual membership invoices are sent out each January, and our Content Registration invoices are generated four times a year, each quarter. All invoices are emailed to the billing contact for your organization (please be sure to update us with any contact changes!) and have a due date of net 45 days. Our invoices now have a “pay now” link in the body of the email. This offers a faster and more convenient way for you to pay, simply by clicking on the link to our payment portal. You can also view invoices as PDFs in the payment portal. An important part of our accounting process is the automated invoice reminder schedule. There are three billing reminders we send by email:
The day immediately after the invoice due date;
21 days past the invoice due date; and
45 days past the invoice due date.
We don’t want to see you go!
We understand there are many factors that can make prompt payment a challenge for some people: international transfer delays or fees; funding for your publishing operations may end; change of contacts; problems receiving our emails.
When an account is 90 days past due, a further email notifies you that your service is at risk of suspension. If an account is then suspended for non-payment it becomes at risk of being ‘terminated’. Once an account has been terminated, you will need to contact our membership specialist to rejoin Crossref. Please note that we send numerous notifications/reminders before suspension or termination takes place (we don’t want to see you go!). We can always be reached at billing@crossref.org for any invoice inquiries you may have.
Tips that work for other users
There are some things you can do to speed-up or simplify payments:
Pay with a credit card, using our online payment portal. This is fast, convenient, and lower in fees
Always reference an invoice number on the payment to ensure that it’s applied to your account efficiently
Be sure to make billing@crossref.org a ‘safe’ email address, so that you receive our invoices and reminders
Always keep us up-to-date with any contact changes at your organization, to ensure that we have accurate information for invoicing and other communication
We recommend giving us a generic email address for your accounts payable team, such as accounts@publisher.com so that if somebody leaves that job, invoices can still get through.
Thanks for working with us! Please let me know in the comments below if you have any feedback or additional tips for your fellow Crossref community members.
