Digital preservation is crucial to the “persistence” of persistent identifiers. Without a reliable archival solution, if a Crossref member ceases operations or there is a technical disaster, the identifier will no longer resolve. This is why the Crossref member terms insist that publishers make best efforts to ensure deposit in a reputable archive service. This means that, if there is a system failure, the DOI will continue to resolve and the content will remain accessible. This is how we protect the integrity of the scholarly record.
This is the first post in a series designed to showcase what we do in the Crossref R&D group, also known as Crossref Labs, which over the last few years has been strengthened, first with Dominika Tkaczyk and Esha Datta, last year with part of Paul Davis’s time, and more recently, yours truly. Research and development are, obviously, crucial for any organization that doesn’t want to stand still. The R&D group builds prototypes, experimental solutions, and data-mining applications that can help us to understand our member base, in the service of future evolution of the organization. One of the strategic pillars of Crossref is that we want to contribute to an environment in which the scholarly research community identifies shared problems and co-creates solutions for broad benefit. We do this in all teams through research and engagement with our expanding community.
On Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019 we discovered that we had accidentally pushed the main Crossref system as part of a docker image into a developer’s account on Docker Hub. The binaries and configuration files that made up the docker image included embedded passwords and API tokens that could have been used to compromise our systems and infrastructure. When we discovered this, we immediately secured the repo, changed all the passwords and secrets, and redeployed the system code. We have since been scanning all of our logs and systems to see if there has been any unusual activity that could be related to the exposure of the container.
Version 5.4.0 metadata schema update now available
2025 March 19
2025 public data file now available
2025 March 12
