What does Crossref do?
Crossref is a not-for-profit membership organisation that provides services to the academic publishing community in an effort to make it easy to find, site, link and assess content.
Services include Content Registration, Crossmark, Reference Linking, Cited-by, Metadata, Similarity Check, Funder Registry and Event Data (coming soon).
Content Registration
Content registration is the assignment of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). You have to be a member (or have an agent acting on your behalf) to use this service. Members are given a DOI prefix, and when they have content they add a unique DOI suffix to create the final DOI. They then send the DOI, URL and metadata to Crossref.
Crossref makes the DOI live and clickable and the metadata is available for use in systems throughout scholarly communications. The metadata includes information about articles such as titles and dates, and also unique labels that identify the content’s authors, affiliations, funders, and its location on the web. The data is used by funders and libraries, to credit and cite the work, report impact of funding, and track outcomes and activity.
DOIs are a vital part of the publishing infrastructure. For more information see our post on DOIs.
Fees apply for this service.
Reference linking
This is the linking to Crossref DOIs in citation and reference lists. It means readers can follow the DOI link from a reference list to where it is hosted on a publisher’s platform, making navigation and discovery easy for readers.
All Crossref members are obliged to link their references for all current journal content (it is also encouraged for other types of content). New members should start reference linking within 18 months of joining Crossref.
There is no charge for reference linking.
Crossmark
This allows readers to see the current status of an article (or other content) — it shows corrections, updates and retractions. Everyone can see information about the article, including changes to content, who funded the research, and what licenses apply to the content by clicking a button and reading the popup that appears.
Publishers have to deposit additional metadata for their content, place the button on their PDFs and their website close to the title, and commit to informing Crossref of any updates.
Fees apply for this service.
Cited-by
This shows what other Crossref content is citing a publisher’s content and lets readers navigate to the articles that have cited that work.
Participation in cited-by is optional and free. To participate publishers just need to deposit references in Crossref, and they can then start retrieving cited-by links for their content. Once the publisher has retrieved the metadata records, they can be displayed to the reader.
Metadata Delivery
Members’ metadata is available for use in a variety of tools and APIs that allow anybody to search and reuse the data. This allows people to incorporate scholarly metadata into their software and services.
There are several user interfaces to access Crossref metadata. Some are general purpose, and others are specialised. People can manually search the metadata with Metadata Search. Machines can also use APIs, including REST to search the metadata.
Fees apply for this service.
Similarity Check
Using iThenticate (run by Turnitin), this service helps editors compare the text of submitted papers for similarity in order to help prevent plagiarism. Similarity Check members contribute their own published content into iThenticate’s database, so the service is open to any members publishing content with DOIs. As more members take part, the database grows, and Editors can check papers against an even wider pool of articles.
Members can compare manuscripts against papers in the database by uploading them to iThenticate, which provides a similarity score and highlighted matches. Editors can use this information to make a decision about the manuscript’s originality.
In return for a reduced rates and additional features such as text matching, Similarity Check members allow Turnitin to index their full catalogue of current and archival content. Turnitin collects metadata daily through the links provided by members in their DOI metadata. This means members wishing to participate must have full text links in the metadata that they deposit.
Similarity Check fees are in two parts: a per-document fee and an annual fee.
Funder Registry
This is is a unique taxonomy of grant-giving organisations. It is a freely-downloadable file listing funders and unique identifiers. It is published CC-0 and updated monthly.
Publishers can collect funder names and grant numbers from authors, match these with the corresponding funder IDs, and add the funder name, funder id, and grant number to their regular Crossref deposits.
There are no fees for depositing funding data.
Event Data — Coming Soon!
This will collect and store activity outside publisher platforms, including on blogs, sharing services, and social media and make it available as raw data. It will not provide metrics, just the transparent raw data, which can then be used in any way you see fit. It uses DOIs to track when an item has been saved, shared, liked, referenced or commented on.
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