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.
This guide gives markup examples for members registering books and chapters by direct deposit of XML. You can also register the books and chapters record type using one of our helper tools: web deposit form.
<book> is the container for all information about a single book volume and (optionally) the book chapters. Books may be deposited as a single book, a series, or a set, and the metadata requirements differ slightly for each type.
Book: a book is single book (monograph) that is not part of a series or a set. The title-level metadata for the book is captured in <book_metadata>.
Book series: books that are part of an ongoing series and have an ISSN assigned should be deposited as a book series. Book metadata is captured in <book_series_metadata>, with series-specific details such as ISSN and series title captured in <series_metadata>. A series-level and volume-level title must be supplied for each book submitted as part of a series. A series-level ISBN and/or DOI may optionally be assigned. Examples of books in series:
Series: a sequence of books with certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. They may be released in successive parts once a year, or less often. For example, Loeb Classical Library or Oxford World’s Classics
Book set: book volumes that cannot stand alone as separate books must be deposited as a book set. A book set has a set-level title but does not require an ISSN. An ISBN and/or DOI may optionally be assigned at the set level. Example of a book set: Le Deuxième Sexe by Simone de Beauvoir, in two volumes: Les faits et les mythes and L’expérience vécue.
Book metadata
Book titles: Books with subtitles should use the <title> and <subtitle> tags to capture the appropriate segment of the title.
Book title DOIs: A DOI is required for each book that you submit. It is not possible to submit DOI information for individual chapters without assigning a DOI to the entire work.
ISBNs: ISBNs should be supplied when available. Both a print and electronic ISSN may be supplied for a book. If a book does not have an ISBN, the <noisbn> element is required.
Contributors: If a book as a whole has a single set of authors, the author(s) should be included in the <contributors> section for the book itself. Editors may also be deposited. If each chapter has distinct authors and/or editors, the authors should also be included at the chapter (<content_item>) level.
Editions: <edition_number>, when given, should include only a number and not additional text such as “edition”. For example, you should submit “3”, not “third edition”.
Citations: <citation_list> should only be used in <book_metadata> instead of <content_item> when the reference list is a separate section of the book and chapters are not included in the deposit.
Book language: The language of the book should be specified in the book_metadata language attribute using the ISO639 language code. If a book contains items in multiple languages this attribute should be set for the predominant language of the book. Individual items may have their language specified in content_item. If all content items are the same language, it is only necessary to specify the language at the book level.
Book chapters: Book chapters are captured in the container element <content_item>. Book chapter DOIs are optional but strongly recommended if the book content will be commonly cited at the chapter level.
Metadata supplied in the top-level book section (<book_metadata>, <book_set_metadata>, or <book_series_metadata>) will be applied to the chapters as well unless distinct information is supplied for a chapter. This includes contributors, citation lists, and publication dates.
Example of a book deposit containing a single book with chapters
<doi_batchxmlns="http://www.crossref.org/schema/4.3.7"xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"version="4.3.7"xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.crossref.org/schema/4.3.7 http://www.crossref.org/schemas/crossref4.3.7.xsd"><head><doi_batch_id>123456</doi_batch_id><timestamp>20082003110604</timestamp><depositor><depositor_name>test data</depositor_name><email_address>support@crossref.org</email_address></depositor><registrant>test data</registrant></head><body><bookbook_type="edited_book"><book_series_metadatalanguage="en"><series_metadata><titles><title>Electrochemistry</title></titles><issn>0305-9979</issn></series_metadata><contributors><person_namesequence="first"contributor_role="editor"><given_name>D</given_name><surname>Pletcher</surname></person_name></contributors><titles><title>Electrochemistry</title></titles><volume>8</volume><publication_datemedia_type="print"><year>1983</year></publication_date><isbn>978-0-85186-067-1</isbn><publisher><publisher_name>Royal Society of Chemistry</publisher_name><publisher_place>Cambridge</publisher_place></publisher><doi_data><doi>10.50505/testdoi13</doi><resource>http://ebook.rsc.org/?DOI=10.1039/9781847557179</resource></doi_data></book_series_metadata><content_itemcomponent_type="other"publication_type="full_text"><contributors><person_namesequence="first"contributor_role="editor"><given_name>D.</given_name><surname>Pletcher</surname></person_name></contributors><titles><title>Front cover</title></titles><pages><first_page>X001</first_page><last_page>X002</last_page></pages><doi_data><doi>10.50505/testdoi14</doi><resource>http://ebook.rsc.org/?DOI=10.1039/9781847557179-FX001
</resource></doi_data></content_item></book></body></doi_batch>
