Blog

2019 has been busy for the Community Outreach Team; our small sub-team travels far and wide, talking to members around the world to learn how we can better support the work they do. We run one-day LIVE local events alongside multi-language webinars, with the addition of a new Community Forum, to better support and communicate with our global membership. This year we held a publisher workshop in London in collaboration with the British Library in February to talk about all things metadata and Open Access, before heading over to speak to members in Kyiv in March at the National Technical University of Ukraine.

2019 Board Election The annual board election is a very important event for Crossref and its members. The board of directors, comprising 16 member organizations, governs Crossref, sets its strategic direction and makes sure that we fulfill our mission. Our members elect the board - its “one member one vote” - and we like to see as many members as possible voting. We are very pleased to announce the 2019 election slate - we have a great set of candidates and an update to the ByLaws addressing the composition of the slate to ensure that the board continues to be representative of our membership.

With a smaller group than usual, we’re dedicating this year’s annual meeting to hear what you value about Crossref. Which initiatives would you put first and/or last? Where would you have us draw the line between mission and ambition? What is “core” for you? How could/should we adapt for the future in order to meet your needs? Striving for balance Different people want different things from us. As Aristotle said: “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

In December, Crossref’s Head of Metadata, Patricia Feeney and I headed to Mumbai for our first ever LIVE local event in India, held in collaboration with Editage. Crossref membership in India has escalated in recent years, with a fifth of its 500 members joining in 2017 alone. Around 40% of these new members are smaller organizations who joined through one of the eight sponsors we currently have in the country.

Running a smooth event is always the goal, but not always the case! No matter how well managed an event is, there is always a chance that things will not go according to plan. And so it was with LIVE18. For the first day we were without the tablecloths we had ordered, which actually gave the room quite a nice, but unintentional, ‘rustic’ look. When they finally did arrive the following day, we realized we preferred the rustic look!

Our LIVE Annual Meeting is back in North America for the first time since 2015, and with just 10 days to go, there’s a lot going on in preparation. As you’d expect with a How good is your metadata? theme—the two-days will be entirely devoted to the subject of metadata—because it touches everything we do, and everything that publishers, hosting platforms, funders, researchers, and librarians do. Oh, and it’s actually super awesome too—and occasionally fun.

There has been a steady increase in the growth of our membership in Latin America—and in Brazil in particular—over the past few years. We currently have more than 800 Brazil-based members; some as individual members, but most are sponsored by another organization. As part of our LIVE Local program Chuck Koscher and I traveled to meet some of these members in Goiânia and Fortaleza, where we co-hosted events with Associação Brasileira de Editores Científicos do Brasil (ABEC Brasil)—one of our largest Sponsors.

LIVE18, your Crossref annual meeting, is fast approaching! We’re looking forward to welcoming everyone in Toronto, November 13-14.

With Crossref developing and extending its services for members and other constituents at a rapid pace, it’s an exciting time to be on our board. We recieved 26 expressions of interest this year, so it seems our members are also excited about what they could help us achieve.

The last few months have been busy for the Crossref community outreach team. We’ve been out and about from Cape Town to Ulyanovsk—and many places in between—talking at ‘LIVE locals’ to members about all things metadata. Our LIVE locals are one-day events, held around the world—but local to you—that provide both deeper insight into Crossref, and information on our services and how to benefit from them. These events are always free to attend, and whether you are a long-established member, totally new, or not even a member at all, we welcome you all to join us.