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.
Version control is the management of changes to a document, file, or dataset. Versions may include: draft, preprint, ending publication, author accepted manuscript (AAM), version of record (VOR), updated or corrected, and even retracted.
Draft
Preprint - early draft or manuscript shared by researcher in a preprint repository or dedicated channel (outside of a specific journal)
Pending publication (PP) - a manuscript which has been accepted but has not yet been published online
Advanced online publication or ahead of print (AOP) - early release of publication which publisher makes available to readers on their platform (prior to typesetting or before final published form)
Author accepted manuscript (AAM) - accepted version which has been peer reviewed but not typeset or copyedited
Version of record (VoR) - typeset, copyedited, and published version
Updated - adding supplementary data or making corrections to the file, or its retraction.
Version control is important for:
traceability (following the development of the document),
identifiability (connecting documents to decisions, contributions, contributors, and time),
clarity (distinguishing between multiple versions of documents, and identifying the latest version),
reduced duplication (removing out-of-date versions), and
reduced errors (clearly indicating to readers which is the current version).
How do I decide if I should assign a DOI to a work, and at what stage? This table sets out seven publication stages of a research object (a publication such as a journal article, book, or dataset). A work may not go through all of these seven stages, so you only need to consider the stages relevant to your publication.
Publication stage
Eligible for a DOI?
Which DOI?
1 Draft
No DOI for draft item
n/a
2 Preprint
Yes
DOI A
3 Pending publication (PP)
Yes
DOI B
4 Advanced online publication/ahead of print (AOP)
Yes
DOI B
5 Author accepted manuscript (AAM)
Yes
DOI B
6 Version of record (VoR)
Yes
DOI B
7 Updated
Yes
DOI C
A DOI should not be assigned to a draft (unpublished) work.
A preprint should have its own DOI (DOI A).
Accepted versions (including PP, AOP, AAM, and VoR) should have a separate DOI (DOI B). Establish a relationship between DOI B and DOI A to show the connection between them, such as DOI B “hasPreprint” DOI A.
In the case of a significant change to the published version, a notice should be published explaining the correction/update/retraction. The updated version should have a new DOI (DOI C). Updates should only be deposited for changes that are likely to affect the interpretation or crediting of the work (editorially significant changes), and instead of simply asserting a relationship, these should be recorded as updates.
The metadata for the update is part of the Crossmark section of the metadata, and should include a link to the item being updated, and the type of update:
