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 Crossref’s 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 they’re working towards each of the principles.
In 2020, Crossref’s 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 “Rethinking staff travel, meetings, and events” outlining our new approach to staff travel, meetings, and events with the goal of not going back to ‘normal’ 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 Similarity Check service gives Crossref members reduced rate access to the iThenticate tool from Turnitin, and there’s now a new version of iThenticate available for some subscribers. iThenticate v2 has lots of new and improved features, including:
The ability to identify content on preprint servers more easily
A “red flag” feature that signals the detection of hidden text such as text/quotation marks in white font, or suspicious character replacement
A faster, more user-friendly and responsive Similarity Report interface
For those members who integrate their iThenticate account with a Manuscript Tracking Service (MTS) there are even more benefits - you can now submit your manuscripts and view your Similarity Report from within the MTS, and you can also manage your exclusions from within your MTS too. There are also some important changes in how you manage users.
You can find out more about the benefits of iThenticate v2 on our blog.
Who can upgrade from iThenticate v1 to iThenticate v2?
Most existing subscribers to Similarity Check are currently using iThenticate v1, and over the next year or so we’ll be inviting these members to upgrade to iThenticate v2. Not everyone can upgrade immediately. This is because many members integrate their iThenticate account with their Manuscript Tracking Service (MTS), and not all the MTSs are able to integrate with iThenticate v2 just yet.
An upgrade is currently available to members of Crossref:
Using iThenticate through the browser
Integrating iThenticate with eJournal Press
Integrating iThenticate with ScholarOne Manuscripts
Integrating iThenticate with Scholastica Peer Review
Integrating iThenticate with Editorial Manager
We’ll be letting members know as the other Manuscript Tracking Systems are able to integrate with iThenticate v2. Brand new subscribers who fall into the categories above will be set up directly on iThenticate v2.
Not sure if you’re currently using iThenticate v1 or iThenticate v2? Here’s how to check.
The upgrade process
When you are able to upgrade from iThenticate v1 to iThenticate v2, we will contact the Similarity Check editorial contact on your account and ask you to complete a form. We will then check that you are still eligible for Similarity Check. This means that we will check that you are still providing Similarity Check URLs for at least 90% of the content you have registered with Crossref, and that the team at Turnitin can continue to index this content into the iThenticate database.
Once this is done, the team at Turnitin will send an email to the Similarity Check editorial contact on your account, so they can set up administrator credentials on your new iThenticate v2 account. The email will look like this:
Click on the blue ‘Set up my account’ button at the bottom of the email. This will bring you to a page which looks something like this:
Fill out your username and password, and don’t forget to tick to agree to the terms and conditions. You will then arrive at your new iThenticate v2 account.
Once you have administrator access to your new iThenticate v2 account, you can follow the instructions for getting set up. There are a different set of instructions depending on whether:
You will be using iThenticate directly in the browser - more here.
You will be integrating iThenticate with your Manuscript Tracking System (MTS) - more here.
If you have any follow up questions after your upgrade, do read our upgrade FAQs.
Page owner: Amanda Bartell | Last updated 2022-July-15
