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 funding data service lets members register funding source information for content items deposited with Crossref.
Things to understand before you deposit
Funders can be represented three ways: 1) the ROR id, 2) the funder name, or 3) the funder name nested with the funder identifier. Since the Open Funder Registry is transitioning into ROR, using the ROR id to identify funders is the preferred method.
If you are not using a ROR id, funding metadata must include the name of the funding organization and the funder identifier (where the funding organization is listed in the Registry), and should include an award/grant number or grant identifier. Funder names should only be deposited without the accompanying ID if the funder is not found in the Registry. While members can deposit the funder name without the identifier, those records will not be considered valid until such a time as the funder is added to the database and they are redeposited (updated) with an ID. What that means is that they will not be found using the filters on funding information that we support via our REST API, or show up in our Open Funder Registry search.
Correct nesting of funder names and identifiers is essential as it significantly impacts how funders, funder identifiers, and award numbers are related to each other. If you use the ROR id to identify funders, this nesting is not neccessary and invalid.
Here are some examples in order of most to least preferred:
Correct: In this example, funder “National Science Foundation” is associated with the ROR id https://ror.org/021nxhr62. No name should be added.
Incorrect: Here, the funder name and ROR id are nested - this is invalid.
<fr:assertion name="funder_name">National Science Foundation
<fr:assertion name="ror">https://ror.org/021nxhr62</fr:assertion>
</assertion>
The purpose of funder groups is to establish relationships between funders and award numbers. A funder group assertion should only be used to associate funder names and identifiers with award numbers when multiple funders are present.
Funding data deposit with one group of funders (no “fundgroup” needed):
Funding data deposit with two fundgroups:
Incorrect: Groups used to associate funder names with funder identifiers, these need to be nested as described above.
Deposits using a funder_identifier that is not taken from the Open Funder Registry will be rejected.
Deposits with only funder_name (no funder_identifier) will not appear in funder search results in Open Funder Registry search or the REST API.
Funding data schema section
The <fr:program> element in the deposit schema section (see documentation) supports the import of the fundref.xsd schema (see documentation). The fundref namespace (xmlns:fr=https://www.crossref.org/fundref.xsd) must be included in the schema declaration, for example:
The fundref.xsd consists of a series of nested <fr:assertion> tags with enumerated name attributes. The name attributes are:
fundgroup: used to group a funder and its associated award number(s) for items with multiple funders.
ror: identifier of the funding agency as it appears in the Research Organization Registry (ROR). To be used instead of nested funder_name and funder_identifier.
funder_name: name of the funding agency as it appears in the funding Registry. Funder names that do not match those in the registry will be accepted to cover instances where the funding organization is not listed.
funder_identifier: funding agency identifier in the form of a DOI, must be nested within the funder_name assertion. The funder_identifier must be taken from the funding Registry and cannot be created by the member. Deposits without funder_identifier or ror do not qualify as funding records.
award_number: grant number or other fund identifier
Either rororfunder_name and funder_identifier must be present in a deposit where the funding body is listed in the Open Funder Registry. Multiple funder_name, funder_identifier, and award_number assertions may be included.
Funder and award number hierarchy
A relationship between a single funder and an award_number is established by including assertions with a <fr:program>.
In this example, funder National Institute on Drug Abuse with ROR id https://ror.org/00fq5cm18 is associated with award number JQY0937263:
In this example, funder National Institute on Drug Abuse with funder identifier https://doi.org/10.13039/100000026 is associated with award number JQY0937263:
<fr:program name="fundref">
<fr:assertion name="funder_name">National Institute on Drug Abuse
<fr:assertion name="funder_identifier">https://doi.org/10.13039/100000026</fr:assertion>
</fr:assertion>
<fr:assertion name="award_number">JQY0937263</fr:assertion>
</fr:program>
If multiple funder and award combinations exist, each combination should be deposited within a fundgroup to ensure that the award number is associated with the appropriate funder(s). In this example, two funding groups exist:
Funder National Science Foundation with ROR id https://ror.org/021nxhr62 is associated with award numbers CBET-106 and CBET-106, and
Funder Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy with funder identifier https://doi.org/10.13039/100006151 is associated with award number 1245-ABDS.
<fr:program name="fundref">
<fr:assertion name="fundgroup">
<fr:assertion name="ror">https://ror.org/021nxhr62</fr:assertion>
<fr:assertion name="award_number">CBET-106</fr:assertion>
<fr:assertion name="award_number">CBET-7259</fr:assertion>
</fr:assertion>
<fr:assertion name="fundgroup">
<fr:assertion name="funder_name">Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy
<fr:assertion name="funder_identifier">https://doi.org/10.13039/100006151</fr:assertion>
</fr:assertion>
<fr:assertion name="award_number">1245-ABDS</fr:assertion>
</fr:assertion>
</fr:program>
Items with multiple funder names but no award numbers may be deposited without a fundgroup.
At a minimum, a funding data deposit must contain either a roror a funder_name and funder_identifier assertion, and using the ROR id is preferred. Deposits with just an award_number assertion are not allowed. A ror or nested funder_name\funder_identifierandaward_number should be included in deposits whenever possible. If a ROR id is used, it should not include a funder_name or funder_identifier.
If the funder name cannot be matched in ROR or the Open Funder Registry, you may submit funder_name only, and the funding body will be reviewed and considered for addition to the official Registry. Until it is added to the Registry, the deposit will not be considered a valid funding record and will not appear in funding search or the REST API.
As demonstrated in Example 3 below, items with several award numbers associated with a single funding organization should be grouped together by enclosing the funder_name, funder_identifier, and award_number(s) within a fundgroup assertion.
Some rules will be enforced by the deposit logic, including:
Nesting of the<fr:assertion>elements: the schema allows infinite nesting of the assertion element to accommodate nesting of an element within itself. Deposit code will only allow 3 levels of nesting (with attribute values of fundgroup, funder_name, and funder_identifier)
Values of different<fr:assertion>elements: funder_name, funder_identifier, and award_number may have deposit rules imposed
Only valid funder identifiers will be accepted: the funder_identifier value will be compared against the Open Funder Registry file. If the funder_identifier is not found, the deposit will be rejected.
Deleting or updating funding metadata
If funding metadata is incorrect or out-of-date, it may be updated by redepositing the metadata. Be sure to redeposit all available metadata for an item, not just the elements being updated. A DOI may be updated without resubmitting funding metadata, as previously deposited funding metadata will remain associated with the DOI.
Funding metadata may be deleted by redepositing an item with an empty <fr:program name="fundref"> element:
The <fr:program> element captures funding data. It should be placed before the <doi_data> element. This deposit contains minimal funding data - one ror must be present; it is recommended over using funder_name and funder_identifier.
This example contains one funder_name and one funder_identifier. Note that the funder_identifier is nested within the funder_name assertion, establishing https://doi.org/10.13039.100000001 as the funder identifier for funder name National Science Foundation. Two award numbers are present.
This example contains one ror (for the National Science Foundation) and one funder_name/identifier (for Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy) with two award_numbers for each funder. Each funding organization is within its own fundgroup.
<fr:program name="fundref">
<fr:assertion name="fundgroup">
<fr:assertion name="ror">https://ror.org/021nxhr62</fr:assertion>
<fr:assertion name="award_number">CBET-106</fr:assertion>
<fr:assertion name="award_number">CBET-7259</fr:assertion>
</fr:assertion>
<fr:assertion name="fundgroup">
<fr:assertion name="funder_name">Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy
<fr:assertion name="funder_identifier">https://doi.org/10.13039/100006151</fr:assertion>
</fr:assertion>
<fr:assertion name="award_number">1245-ABDS</fr:assertion>
<fr:assertion name="award_number">98562-POIUB</fr:assertion>
</fr:assertion>
</fr:program>
