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 posted content (includes preprints) by direct deposit of XML. It is not currently possible to register the posted content (includes preprints) record type using one of our helper tools.
Depositing and updating posted content
Posted content is a Crossref record type available starting with schema version 4.4.0. The schema updates include a number of posted content-specific elements. The top level element is called posted_content and has an attribute called type. This attribute is given a value from an enumerated list that defines the nature of the posted content. The current set of enumerations are:
preprint
working_paper
letter
dissertation
report
other
The default value is preprint. Please contact us if you want to deposit metadata for a posted record type which is not on this list.
Metadata elements
The posted record type contains the following elements (* = required ** available as of schema version 5.4.0):
Element
Description
group_title
The hosting platform may organize its posted content into categories or subject areas. This field is used to name the container for the posted item
contributors
Container for author information
titles*
The titles (title and subtitle) of the posted content
posted_date*
The date when the posted content became available online on the hosting platform
acceptance_date
The date the content item was submitted to and accepted by the hosting platform
institution
Container for information about an organization that sponsored or hosted an item but is not the publisher
status**
status of preprint (withdrawn or removed)
version_info, version, description**
version number and description of version changes
program: funding
Source of funding applicable to research related to the posted content
program: access indicators
License terms
program: relations
Relationships (other than bibliographic citation) to other works, such as found in acknowledgments or list of supplemental material
doi_data*
Container for persistent identifier and URL
citation_list
Posted content bibliography listing of citations to other works
Updating metadata with relationship to AAM/VoR
Once a posted content item has been published, the posted content publisher must update their publication metadata with the AAM/VoR DOI using the isPreprintOf relation type.
<programxmlns="https://www.crossref.org/relations.xsd"><related_item><!--DOI of the AM / VOR--><intra_work_relationrelationship-type="isPreprintOf"identifier-type="doi">10.5555/preprint_sample_doi_vor</intra_work_relation></related_item></program>
The relationship metadata may be updated with either a full metadata deposit (existing metadata plus the ‘relationship’ metadata) or as a resource-only deposit. Metadata deposited using the resource schema will be appended to the existing metadata.
Posted content and conflicts
When a posted content item is submitted for a published item that has a registered metadata record, a conflict is created. The conflict is resolved when the posted content item is updated with the relationship metadata for the published item’s DOI. Learn more about the conflict report.
Posted content and Cited-by matches
When you query for Cited-by matches, you can choose to include posted content matches in your results. By default, posted content is not included. To retrieve matches including posted content:
HTTPS queries
Add the include_postedcontent=true parameter to your query, for example:
<posted_content><!--group_title: Prepublication content items may be organized into groupings within a given publisher. This element provides for naming the group. It is expected that publishers will have a small number of groups each of which reflect a topic or subject area. (required)--><group_title>Metadata Quality</group_title><contributors><person_namesequence="first"contributor_role="author"><given_name>Dorothy</given_name><surname>Depositor</surname><ORCID>http\://orcid.org/0000-0002-4011-3590</ORCID></person_name></contributors><titles><title>Mind your < and >: why XML needs to be valid</title></titles><!--posted_date: The date when the posted content became available online on the hosting platform (required)--><posted_date><month>01</month><day>15</day><year>1971</year></posted_date><!--acceptance_date: date the content item was submitted to and accepted by the hosting platform. (optional) --><acceptance_date><month>01</month><day>01</day><year>1971</year></acceptance_date><!--optional funding and license data--><programname="fundref"xmlns="http://www.crossref.org/fundref.xsd"><assertionname="fundgroup"><assertionname="funder_name"> U.S. Department of Energy <assertionname="funder_identifier">100000015</assertion></assertion><assertionname="award_number">DE-FG03-03SF22691</assertion></assertion><assertionname="fundgroup"><assertionname="funder_name"> U.S. Department of Energy <assertionname="funder_identifier">100000015</assertion></assertion><assertionname="award_number">DE-AC52-06NA27279</assertion></assertion></program><programxmlns="http://www.crossref.org/AccessIndicators.xsd"><free_to_readstart_date="2016-01-01"/><license_ref>http://some.co.org/license_page.html</license_ref></program><!--DOI and URL (required)--><doi_data><doi>10.50505/preprint_sample_doi_1</doi><resource>http://www.crossref.org/index.html</resource></doi_data><!--citation list for the item (optional)--><citation_list><citationkey="pp1"><doi>10.5555/12345678</doi></citation></citation_list></posted_content>
Example of a posted content deposit containing a relationship to a VOR
<!-- relationship established with VOR DOI (required when VOR is identified)--><programxmlns="https://www.crossref.org/relations.xsd"><related_item><intra_work_relationrelationship-type="isPreprintOf"identifier-type="doi">10.5555/preprint_sample_doi_vor</intra_work_relation></related_item></program><!--DOI and URL (required)--><doi_data><doi>10.50505/preprint_sample_doi_1</doi><resource>https://www.crossref.org/index.html</resource></doi_data>
Example of a journal article deposit that includes a relationship to posted content
<publication_date><year>2016</year></publication_date><!--relationship established with posted content (preprint) DOI--><programxmlns="https://www.crossref.org/relations.xsd"><related_item><intra_work_relationrelationship-type="hasPreprint"identifier-type="doi">10.50505/preprint_sample_doi_1</intra_work_relation></related_item></program><doi_data><doi>10.5555/preprint_sample_doi_vor</doi><resource>https://www.crossref.org/index.html</resource></doi_data>
Example of email notification of posted content match
Member Example Publishing has deposited DOI 10.5555/preprint_sample_doi_vor (http://doi.org/10.5555/preprint_sample_doi_vor) claiming it is the VoR for your posted content DOI 10.50505/preprint_sample_doi_1.
Please display a link to the Version of Record from your posted content online. Linking posted content to the published record is critical to enabling the full history of scholarly results, and ensuring that the citation record is clear and up-to-date.
If you have questions please contact support@crossref.org and one of our colleagues (in the EST timezone) will get back to you.
Many thanks,
Crossref
