This year, metadata development is one of our key priorities and weâre 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; weâve added a âtypeâ 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, weâre 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. Itâs 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 worldâs least economically advantaged countries. Eligibility for the program is based on a memberâs 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.
In May, we updated you on the latest changes and improvements to the new version of iThenticate and let you know that a new similarity report and AI writing detection tool were on the horizon.
On Wednesday 1 November 2023, Turnitin (who produce iThenticate) will be releasing a brand new similarity report and a free preview to their AI writing detection tool in iThenticate v2. The AI writing detection tool will be enabled by default and account administrators will be able to switch it off/on.
Turnitin will be running a webinar on their new similarity report and AI writing detection tool on Tuesday 28 November (EDIT 23/11/16: Monday 11 December 2023). More information on the webinar and how to register will be communicated by Turnitin in the coming weeks.
New similarity report
On Wednesday, all iThenticate v2 users will have access to the new version of the similarity report which will include:
a word count and the number of text blocks for each matched source
the ability to include or exclude overlapping sources from the overall similarity score
a clearer colour differentiation between the different sources
improved accessibility features
Enabling the new similarity report
The new similarity report will be enabled as a default for all your journals. Account administrators wishing to switch off the new similarity report can do so by going to Settings and selecting from the General tab, under the New Similarity Report Experience heading, the Disable option.
Classic view / new view
As this will be a significant change to your current experience, Turnitin have provided access for a period of time to the âclassic viewâ and you will be able to toggle between the original interface and the new one by clicking on âSwitch to the classic viewâ or âSwitch to the new viewâ buttons at the top of your report.
The similarity score will continue to be available at the top right-hand corner of the similarity report.
Exclusions
By clicking on the Filters button youâll be able to check and/or adjust your reportâs section and repository exclusions.
Please note that the exclusions previously set up by account administrators should be unchanged by this release.
Sources / Match Groups view
The Sources view will be the default view and will list all sources. By using the on/off button next to âShow overlapping sourcesâ, youâll be able to include or exclude overlapping sources. This will be âoffâ as a default.
The Match Groups view is completely new and may not suit everyoneâs needs. It is divided into four categories âNot Cited or Quotedâ, âMissing Quotationsâ, âMissing Citationâ and âCited and Quotedâ and will highlight matches found in your text.
PDF report
Youâll also now find the PDF report in the top right-hand corner of the similarity report, by clicking on the âdownloadâ icon.
Submission details
âSubmission Detailsâ is located now under the âiâ icon in the top right-hand corner of your report. This is where you will find the oid (or unique number) for your manuscript which Turnitin will ask you to provide when you are reporting a technical issue.
Many of you have been concerned about the use of AI writing in the research papers youâve received since the launch of ChatGPT last November and have been in touch to enquire about the availability of an AI writing detection tool for Crossref members.
You will also have read that Turnitin have developed an AI writing detector tool and have made it available to their education sector customers since April. Turnitin have published an update in May, a helpful video and further information on the false positive rates in June based on the feedback theyâve received from the education community.
I am pleased to announce that Turnitinâs AI writing detection tool will be available as a free preview to iThenticate v2 users, via the new version of the similarity report, from Wednesday 1 November until the end of December 2023.
Enabling AI writing detection
Our preference was to have the new AI writing detection tool turned âoffâ as a default, however this hasnât been possible. Account administrators can turn this feature off by going to Settings and selecting the Crossref Web tab and scrolling down to the AI Writing section at the very bottom of the page. The feature is applied to all submissions when it is enabled.
Please note that AI Writing detection is only available in the new similarity report.
Integrations
There is currently no integration between manuscript tracking systems and the AI writing detection tool. However the AI score will be available via the similarity report. If the AI writing detection tool has been set as âoffâ by the account administrator, there will be no score and the âAI Writingâ heading will not be visible on the similarity report:
File requirements
Turnitin have made some important file requirements available for the tool to run a report:
Must be written in English
A minimum 300 words
A maximum of 15,000 words
The file size must be less than 100 MB
Accepted file types are .docx, .pdf, .rtf and .txt
If your file does not meet the above requirements, iThenticate v2 will display the following message:
Turnitinâs AI writing detection tool has been developed to detect GPT 3, 3.5, 4 and other variants. More information on this is available on their FAQs page.
Turnitin have provided the following guidance regarding the AI scores:
âBlue with a percentage between 0 and 100: The submission has processed successfully. The displayed percentage indicates the amount of qualifying text within the submission that Turnitinâs AI writing detection model determines was generated by AI. As noted previously, this percentage is not necessarily the percentage of the entire submission. If text within the submission was not considered long-form prose text, it will not be included.
Our testing has found that there is a higher incidence of false positives when the percentage is between 1 and 20. In order to reduce the likelihood of misinterpretation, the AI indicator will display an asterisk (*) for percentages between 1 and 20 to call attention to the fact that the score is less reliable.
To explore the results of the AI writing detection capabilities, select the indicator to open the AI writing report. The AI writing report opens in a new tab of the window used to launch the Similarity Report. If you have a pop-up blocker installed, ensure it allows Turnitin pop-ups.â
Please note that unlike the similarity report, the AI writing report will only provide a score and highlight the blocks of texts likely to have been written by an AI tool and will not list source matches.
We encourage you to test the writing detection tool as much as possible during the free preview period (1 November-31 December 2023).
Next
Paraphrase detection
Turnitin are planning to release a beta version of their new paraphrase detection tool at the end of this year/Q1, 2024. It will be initially available as a free preview for a short period of time. (EDIT 23/11/16: There is currently no timeline available for Turnitinâs paraphrase detection tool which is having a knock-on effect on the availiblity of the AI writing and paraphrase detection bundle and associated fees previously mentioned in this post)
AI and paraphrase detection bundle (EDIT 23/11/16: AI writing detection tool)
Once the free preview period ends, Turnitin would like to offer Crossref members an AI and paraphrase detection bundle (EDIT 23/11/16: are planning to make their AI writing detection tool available) from 2024 - this means that if you choose to subscribe to this new service, you will be charged an additional fee each time you upload a manuscript.
Fixes
Many of you have been waiting for fixes to the aggregation of URLs issues in the matched sources of the similarity report and to the doc-to-doc PDF report in iThenticate v2. Turnitin are planning to release fixes for these before the end of 2023.
âď¸ Do get in touch via support@crossref.org if you have any questions about iThenticate v1 or v2 or start a discussion by commenting on this post below or in our Community Forum.
