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.
Registering references means submitting them as part of your metadata deposit. It is optional but strongly encouraged, especially if you use our Cited-by service.
The benefits of registering references as part of your metadata include:
making your content more discoverable
enabling evaluation of research, and
helping with citation counts.
Whenever you register content with us, make sure you include your references in the submission.
Including references (or adding them to an existing deposit) can be done by:
Crossref XML plugin for OJS: You must first enable References as a submission metadata field and then enable the Crossref reference linking plugin, to include references in your initial deposit, or add them later.
Record registration form: Our new record registration form for journal articles has a built-in field for adding references. Learn more about how to use the record registration form.
Metadata Manager: If you’re still using the deprecated Metadata Manager, there’s a field where you can add references and Metadata Manager will attempt to match your references to their DOIs. If you want to add references to an existing deposit, simply find the existing record, add your references, and resubmit. Learn more about updating article metadata using Metadata Manager.
When depositing references as part of your content registration XML, mark up individual citations according to our deposit schema section. For example:
<citationkey="ref1"><journal_title>Current Opinion in Oncology</journal_title><author>Chauncey</author><volume>13</volume><first_page>21</first_page><cYear>2001</cYear></citation>
Marking up each element allows us to be very precise when identifying potential matches with registered DOIs.
If you know the DOIs of individual citations, include them. We’ll use the metadata deposited for the DOI when generating Cited-by matches:
References may also be included as an unstructured citation. This option is not as precise as including an already-matched DOI or marking up a citation into individual elements.
<citationkey="ref=3"><unstructured_citation>Clow GD, McKay CP, Simmons Jr. GM, and Wharton RA, Jr. 1988. Climatological observations and predicted sublimation rates at Lake Hoare, Antarctica. Journal of Climate 1:715-728.</unstructured_citation></citation>
A type attribute has been added to the <citation> element with schema version 5.4.0. This allows citations to be labeled with a specific type, like data, software, ore journal article. A full list of types is available below.
As well as for depositing conventional references, data and software citations can also be deposited by inserting them into an item’s references metadata. To do so, follow the general process for depositing references as described above. Members can deposit the full data or software citation as an unstructured reference, or they can employ any number of reference tags currently accepted by us. It’s always best to include the DOI (either DataCite or Crossref) for the dataset if possible.
Current elements for citation tagging
<issn>: ISSN of a series (print or electronic)
<journal_title>
<author>: first author of an article or other publication
<volume>: volume number (journal or book set)
<issue>: journal issue
<first_page>
<cYear>: year of publication
<article_title>: journal article, conference paper, or book chapter title
<isbn>
<series_title>: title of a book or conference series
<volume_title>: book or conference proceeding title
<edition_number>
<article_title>
<std_designator>
<standards_body_name>
<standards_body_acronym>
<component_number>: the chapter, section, part number for a content item in a book
<unstructured_citation>: citations for which no structured data is available. Our ability to process unstructured citations is limited (learn more about querying with formatted citations)
<doi>: include the DOI wherever possible
All citation elements are optional, but please submit as much information as you can to help us match your citations to DOIs.
Journal citations should include either <issn> or <journal_title> or both. <journal_title> only is preferred over <issn> only. In addition the first author (<author>) and <first_page number> should be submitted. <first_page> number is preferred, but for those citations that are “in press”, the author should be submitted.
When submitting a book or conference citation, you should include an <isbn>, <series_title>, <volume_title>, or any combination of these three elements as may be available.
A citation for a standard must include a standard designator (<std_designator>) as well as the name and acronym of a standards body (<standards_body_name>, <standards_body_acronym>). These elements are required for identifying a citation of a standard.
Citation types
Citation types are supported as of schema version 5.4.0 and help identify citations that may otherwise be difficult to match or define if a DOI is not provided. The list of types is comprised of currently supported record types, commonly cited objects, and items that are often registered with Crossref but not yet fully supported.
XML
JSON
Description
blog
blog
use when citing a blog
blog_post
blog-post
use when citing an individual blog post
book
book
use for all types of books
book_chapter
book-chapter
use for all parts of books including chapters, sections, definitions, reference entries
collection
collection
an aggregation of resources, commonly used with data
conference_paper
conference-paper
a single conference paper
conference_proceedings
conference-proceedings
a single conference proceeding
dataset
dataset
a single dataset
dissertation
dissertation
dissertation or thesis
journal
journal
a journal or volume/issue of a journal
journal_articlea
journal-article
a single journal article of any type
other
other
use to capture types not otherwise defined
patent
patent
peer_review
peer-review
a single peer review report or aggregation of peer reviews
poster
poster
a single conference poster
preprint
preprint
protocol
protocol
a single research protocol
registered_report
registered-report
research article where methods and protocols are registered and reviewed before research is performed
report
report
report or working paper
software
software
piece of software being cited
standard
standard
a single standard
web_resource
web-resource
a web page or web site
Metadata deposit example
References may be included with a metadata deposit. The references are included within the <citation_list> element. Review the example below or download an XML file.
<doi_batchxmlns="http://www.crossref.org/schema/5.4.0"xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"version="5.4.0"xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.crossref.org/schema/5.4.0 http://www.crossref.org/schema/deposit/crossref5.4.0.xsd"><head><doi_batch_id>1dbb27d1030c6c9d9d-7ff0</doi_batch_id><timestamp>200504260247</timestamp><depositor><depositor_name>your name</depositor_name><email_address>your@email.com</email_address></depositor><registrant>WEB-FORM</registrant></head><body><journal><journal_metadata><full_title>Test Publication</full_title><abbrev_title>TP</abbrev_title><issnmedia_type="print">12345678</issn></journal_metadata><journal_issue><publication_datemedia_type="print"><month>12</month><day>1</day><year>2005</year></publication_date><journal_volume><volume>12</volume></journal_volume><issue>1</issue></journal_issue><!--This is the article's metadata--><journal_articlepublication_type="full_text"><titles><title>Article 12292005 9:32</title></titles><contributors><person_namesequence="first"contributor_role="author"><given_name>Bob</given_name><surname>Surname</surname><ORCID>http\://orcid.org/0000-0002-4011-3590</ORCID></person_name></contributors><publication_datemedia_type="print"><month>12</month><day>1</day><year>2004</year></publication_date><pages><first_page>100</first_page><last_page>200</last_page></pages><doi_data><doi>10.50505/test_20051229930</doi><resource>http://www.crossref.org/</resource></doi_data><!--the list of references cited in the above article--><citation_list><citationtype="journal_article"key="ref1"><journal_title>Current Opinion in Oncology</journal_title><author>Chauncey</author><volume>13</volume><first_page>21</first_page><cYear>2001</cYear></citation><citationtype="dataset"key="ref2"><doi>10.5555/small_md_0001</doi></citation><citationtype="journal_article"key="ref=3"><unstructured_citation>Clow GD, McKay CP, Simmons Jr. GM, and Wharton RA, Jr. 1988. Climatological observations and predicted sublimation rates at Lake Hoare, Antarctica. Journal of Climate 1:715-728.</unstructured_citation></citation></citation_list></journal_article></journal></body></doi_batch>
<doi_batchxmlns="http://www.crossref.org/doi_resources_schema/4.3.6"xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"version="4.3.6"xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.crossref.org/doi_resources_schema/4.3.6 http://www.crossref.org/schema/deposit/doi_resources4.3.6.xsd"><head><doi_batch_id>123456</doi_batch_id><depositor><depositor_name>your name</depositor_name><email_address>support@crossref.org</email_address></depositor></head><body><doi_citations><!--The DOI of the article that contains the citations --><doi>10.5555/small_md_0001</doi><!--The list of references cited in the above article --><citation_list><citationtype="journal_article"key="ref1"><journal_title>Current Opinion in Oncology</journal_title><author>Chauncey</author><volume>13</volume><first_page>21</first_page><cYear>2001</cYear></citation><citationtype="dataset"key="ref2"><doi>10.5555/small_md_0001</doi></citation><citationtype="journal_article"key="ref=3"><unstructured_citation>Clow GD, McKay CP, Simmons Jr. GM, and Wharton RA, Jr. 1988. Climatological observations and predicted sublimation rates at Lake Hoare, Antarctica. Journal of Climate 1:715-728.</unstructured_citation></citation></citation_list></doi_citations></body></doi_batch>
