Looking back over 2024, we wanted to reflect on where we are in meeting our goals, and report on the progress and plans that affect you - our community of 21,000 organisational members as well as the vast number of research initiatives and scientific bodies that rely on Crossref metadata.
In this post, we will give an update on our roadmap, including what is completed, underway, and up next, and a bit about what’s paused and why.
The Crossref2024 annual meeting gathered our community for a packed agenda of updates, demos, and lively discussions on advancing our shared goals. The day was filled with insights and energy, from practical demos of Crossrefâs latest API features to community reflections on the Research Nexus initiative and the Board elections.
Our Board elections are always the focal point of the Annual Meeting. We want to start reflecting on the day by congratulating our newly elected board members: Katharina Rieck from Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Lisa Schiff from California Digital Library, Aaron Wood from American Psychological Association, and Amanda Ward from Taylor and Francis, who will officially join (and re-join) in January 2025.
Background The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) provides a set of guidelines for operating open infrastructure in service to the scholarly community. It sets out 16 points to ensure that the infrastructure on which the scholarly and research communities rely is openly governed, sustainable, and replicable. Each POSI adopter regularly reviews progress, conducts periodic audits, and self-reports how theyâre working towards each of the principles.
In 2020, Crossrefâs board voted to adopt the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure, and we completed our first self-audit.
In June 2022, we wrote a blog post âRethinking staff travel, meetings, and eventsâ outlining our new approach to staff travel, meetings, and events with the goal of not going back to ânormalâ after the pandemic. We took into account three key areas:
The environment and climate change Inclusion Work/life balance We are aware that many of our members are also interested in minimizing their impacts on the environment, and we are overdue for an update on meeting our own commitments, so here goes our summary for the year 2023!
The web deposit form is suitable for making small numbers of deposits, and you do not need any knowledge of XML to use it. You can use this form to deposit metadata for journals, books, conference proceedings, reports, and dissertations. You can also upload NLM or JATS-formatted XML using this form.
How to use the web deposit form to register your content
Step one: Select your record type
Start at the web deposit form and select the type of content you want to register: journal, book, conference proceedings, report or dissertation. Different fields will appear depending on what you’ve chosen.
Step two: Add the content you want to register
Journals
You can deposit a journal-level DOI only or DOIs for each article within a given issue.
Register DOIs for articles - you can register articles for up to one issue in any deposit. On the first screen, enter information for the relevant journal or issue, then click add articles. After you’ve added information for each article, click on Add another article to register the next article. When you are done, click Finish.
Register a journal-level DOI only - on the first screen, enter the information for the relevant journal or issue and click Submit journal/issue DOI.
Please note: when you register your first item, be really careful about the journal title you enter - this will create a journal title record and any future submissions will have to match this. Your journal title doesn’t have to match the title in the ISSN portal, but if you do want it to match, make sure to check what this is before you register your first item.
Books
You can register both book- and chapter-level information. Add you content and select Submit Book DOI to deposit a title-level DOI, or select Add Chapters to enter metadata for chapters attached to the book being registered. For series and sets, only one volume can be registered at a time.
Conference proceedings
Enter event and conference paper information. Select Add Papers to enter metadata for conference papers.
Reports
Select Submit Report DOI to deposit a single report DOI, or select Add Content Item if the report contains multiple chapters or papers.
Dissertations
Complete the fields and click Submit dissertation.
Step three: Login and submit your content
Login with your Crossref account credentials, and then add the email address that should receive the submission log email. Even if your login username is your email address, you still need to add an email address to receive the submission log email. It can be the same or different from the email you used as your login username. Finally, click Deposit.
Your submission is then added to our submission queue. When we’ve processed your file we’ll send you a log via email (to the address you gave us in step three). You must review this log to make sure your content was registered successfully. Learn more about error and warning messages.
We also send you a copy of the XML that has been generated by the web deposit form. This XML is just for your records - you don’t need to do anything with it. If changes or corrections need to be made to your metadata record, you can edit and submit the XML instead of re-entering your metadata into the form. If you do edit the XML, be sure to increment the value in the <timestamp> field to ensure a successful update.
Web deposit form limitations and how to work around them
There are some metadata elements that you canât currently register as part of your initial deposit in the web deposit form. However, you can add many of these to an existing deposit later on, using our other tools. Hereâs a list of the elements that canât currently be included in your initial deposit with the web deposit form, and your options for adding them later:
archive locations, and article numbers or IDs can’t be registered using the web deposit form.
Funding and license information, Similarity Check URLs, STM-article sharing framework (stm-asf) license information, and text and data mining URLs can be added to existing DOIs in bulk using a supplemental metadata upload.
References: use Simple Text Query to match and deposit references to existing DOIs.
How to use the web deposit form to upload a JATS or NLM file
You can use the web deposit form to upload an XML file built according to the NLM or JATS document type definition (DTD) publishing tag set. Find out more.
How to use the web deposit form for supplemental metadata upload using a .csv file
Supplemental metadata upload enables members to add metadata elements to existing DOIs in bulk by uploading a .csv file via the web deposit form. You can use it to add funding metadata, license metadata, funding and license metadata together, Similarity Check URLs, or STM-article sharing framework (stm-asf) license metadata.
Don’t use commas (,) or quotation marks (") within a column value
Dates must be in the format: YYYY-MM-DD
If metadata is not available for an item, leave the cell blank. If an entire column is not populated, you may omit it. Do not enter placeholders such as n/a or -, as this will cause your deposit to fail, or cause incorrect metadata to be attached to a DOI
Files may be up to 45 MB in size. We automatically split the file into batches of 4,000 DOIs for processing. We send you two emails for each batch: a submission log, and a copy of the submitted XML, so uploading a large file may result in many emails.
Step two: Add the relevant headings and information
You’ll need to add different headings and information depending on what type of metadata you wish to add to your record. Here are the options:
To update your deposits with Funder Registry metadata using a .csv file, your file must contain 4 columns with these headings:
DOI: the DOI whose metadata is being updated
<funder_name>: name of the funding agency as it appears in the Funder Registry. Learn more about accessing the Funder Registry.
<funder_identifier>: funding agency identifier in the form of a DOI
<award_number>: grant number or other fund identifier
If a DOI has multiple funders, the DOI must be repeated for each funder. We recommend that all available metadata is deposited. If a piece of funding metadata is not available (for example, a grant number) the field should be left blank.
Add both funding and license metadata at the same time
Funding and license metadata may be combined into a single file. The order is important: please include columns in the order listed below (*=required):
DOI: the DOI whose metadata is being updated*
<funder_name>: name of the funding agency* as it appears in the Funder Registry. Learn more about accessing the Funder Registry
<funder_identifier>: funding agency identifier in the form of a DOI*
<award_number>: grant number or other fund identifier*
<license_ref>: license URL
<license_ref applies_to="vor">: license URL for version of record
<vor_lic_start_date>: start date of version of record license
<license_ref applies_to="am">: license URL for accepted manuscript
<am_lic_start_date>: start date of accepted manuscript license
<license_ref applies_to="tdm">: license URL for text and data mining
<tdm_lic_start_date>: start date of text and data mining license
<resource content_version="vor">: item URL for version of record
<resource content_version="vor" mime_type="?">: item URL for version of record with MIME type
<resource content_version="am">: item URL for author manuscript with MIME type
<resource content_version="am" mime_type="?">: item URL for author manuscript with MIME type
Open your file using spreadsheet software (such as MS Excel). Your file should contain two columns with the headings DOI and <item crawler="iParadigms">, where DOI is the DOI being updated and <item crawler="iParadigms"> is the URL being submitted for Similarity Check indexing. Here is an example:
Replace the example DOIs (10.5555/test1) and URLs (https://www.yoururl.com/pdf1) with your DOIs and URLs.
Be sure to save the file as .csv and not as .xlsx (or any other file type)
Some spreadsheet programs add additional quotation marks to the column headers, such as "DOI" or "<item crawler="iParadigms">". If your upload is not successful, please open your file in a text editor, and make sure the top line of the file is simply: DOI or <item crawler="iParadigms">. Edit if necessary, and resubmit.
As of 2022, Crossref supports registration of STM-article sharing framework (stm-asf) license metadata. The .csv file may contain these headings (*=required):
DOI: the DOI whose metadata is being updated*
<license_ref applies_to="stm-asf">: stm-asf license URL for version of record
<stm-asf_lic_start_date>: start date of version of record license
<license_ref applies_to="am">: license URL for accepted manuscript
<am_lic_start_date>: start date of accepted manuscript license
<license_ref applies_to="tdm">: license URL for accepted manuscript
<tdm_lic_start_date>: start date of accepted manuscript license
<resource content_version="vor">: item URL for version of record
<resource content_version="vor" mime_type="?">: item URL for version of record with MIME type
<resource content_version="am">: item URL for author manuscript with MIME type
<resource content_version="am" mime_type="?">: item URL for author manuscript with MIME type
<resource>: item URL with no version type and with MIME type
<resource mime_type="?">: item URL with no version type
Click the choose file button next to csv file information and select your .csv file for upload
Enter the email address that should receive the submission log email
Click upload csv data
Some initial validation relating to formatting is performed upon upload. Incomplete or incorrect files will return an error message, and will not be deposited. If the file passes the initial validation, it will be converted to XML, and registered with us. Additional validation is performed upon deposit.
You will receive a submission log when your deposit is complete. Please review the log to be sure your DOIs have been updated successfully.
Please contact us with questions or comments about your .csv upload. If you are reporting problems with a .csv upload, please attach the .csv file to your support request.
Page owner: Isaac Farley | Last updated 2022-July-22
