Video · January 2025
Crossref at 25
Crossref was incorporated on 19 January 2000 by a small group of publishers who agreed that persistent links between scholarly works were too important to leave to any one of them alone. Twenty-five years on, this short film looks back at what that founding decision made possible — and forward to the next quarter-century of open infrastructure.
Watch the film
Crossref at 25 — a short film marking the organisation's 25th anniversary, 19 January 2025
What the film covers
- The founding moment — why eight publishers came together in 2000 to register the first Crossref DOIs and run a shared linking infrastructure
- A growing network — how membership expanded from those eight founders to over 25,000 organisations in 167 countries, across every type of scholarly publisher
- From DOIs to the Research Nexus — how the work has grown from persistent links to a connected graph of works, people, organisations, funders, and outputs
- POSI in practice — what it means to run not-for-profit, community-governed infrastructure for the long term
- The next 25 years — what the community is building together: richer metadata, broader participation, and a more equitable scholarly record
Anniversary context
| Event | Date |
|---|
| Crossref incorporated | 19 January 2000 |
| First DOIs registered | 2000 |
| 10th anniversary | 2010 |
| 25th anniversary | 2025 |
| Members today | 25,000+ across 167 countries |
For the Crossref 10 years retrospective publication (2010, English and Japanese), see the parallel anniversary booklet from the 10-year mark.
