In December 2026, we plan to publish new Crossref Member Practices which will set out the standards we expect all Crossref members to meet. From August to October 2026 we are consulting with our members on a draft of these Member Practices. This blog provides the background to this, and explains how you can share your views.
The Crossref community in India is as diverse as the region that it represents, comprising 1605 members, 11 sponsoring organisations, and 5 ambassadors, who between them cover the length and breadth of this country. Between November 2025 and March 2026, we organised three webinars focused on supporting this community with best metadata and publishing practices. We collaborated with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to embed understanding of metadata’s role in the greater context of publishing integrity.
PID strategies are being written around the world right now, and the decisions being made will shape the scholarly record for decades. After 25 years running open scholarly infrastructure—now on behalf of 25,000 members in 167 countries—Crossref has an informed perspective on what those decisions should ideally rest on. Today we’re setting it out in our first position paper: Persistent identifiers in research infrastructure policy: the need for a holistic approach. You can read it online or download the PDF; it’s a 16-minute read.
Research is rarely limited to a single contributor performing a single role. Behind every research output are people contributing in various ways: software development, data analyses, methodology design, and much more. Often, the same person contributes in several of these ways. Until now, Crossref metadata could only capture part of that picture, but this is changing with Schema 5.5.
To work out which version you’re on, take a look at the website address that you use to access iThenticate. If you go to ithenticate.com then you are using v1. If you use a bespoke URL, https://crossref-[your member ID].turnitin.com/ then you are using iThenticate 2.0.
Use doc-to-doc comparison to compare a primary uploaded document with up to five comparison uploaded documents. Any documents that you upload to doc-to-doc comparison will not be indexed and will not be searchable against any future submissions.
Uploading a primary document to doc-to-doc comparison will cost you a single document submission, but the comparison documents uploaded will not cost you any submissions.
Start from Folders, go to the Submit a document menu, and click Doc-to-Doc Comparison.
The doc-to-doc comparison screen allows you to choose one primary document and up to five comparison documents. Choose the destination folder for the documents you will upload. The Similarity Report for the comparison will be added to the same folder.
For your primary document, provide the author’s first name, last name, and document title. If you do not provide these details, the filename will be used for the title, and the author details will stay blank.
If you have administrator permissions, you can assign the Similarity Report for the comparison to a reporting group by selecting one from the Reporting Group drop-down. Learn more about reporting groups.
Click Choose File, and select the file you want to upload as your primary document. See the file requirements for both the primary and comparison documents on the right of the screen.
You can choose up to five comparison documents to check against your primary document. These do not need to be given titles and author details. Each of the filenames must be unique. Click Choose Files, and select the files you would like to upload as comparison documents. To remove a file from the comparison before you upload it, click the X icon next to the file. To upload your files for comparison, click Upload.
Once your document has been uploaded and compared against the comparison documents, it will appear in your chosen destination folder.
This upload will have ‘Doc-to-Doc Comparison’ beneath the document title to show that this is a comparison upload and has not been indexed.
The upload will be given a Similarity Score against the selected comparison documents, which is also displayed in the report column. Click the similarity percentage to open the doc-to-doc comparison in the Document Viewer.
The Document Viewer is separated into three sections:
Along the top of the screen, the paper information bar shows details about the primary document, including document title, author, date the report was processed, word count, number of comparison documents provided, and how many of those documents matched with the primary document.
On the left panel is the paper text - this is the text of your primary document. Matching text is highlighted in red.
Your comparison documents will appear in the sources panel to the right, showing instances of matching text within the submitted documents.
By default, the doc-to-doc comparison will open the Document Viewer in the All Sources view. This view lists all the comparison documents you uploaded. Each comparison document has a percentage showing the amount of content within them that is similar to the primary document. If a comparison document has no matching text with the primary document, it has 0% next to it.
Doc-to-doc comparison can also be viewed in Match Overview mode. In this view, the comparison documents are listed with highest match percentage first, and all the sources are shown together, color-coded, on the paper text.
Page maintainer: Kathleen Luschek Last updated: 2020-May-19