CrossRef: Using metadata
and identifiers to improve
scholarly communications
Ed Pentz
Executive Director, CrossRef
Chair, ORCID Board
Board Member, International DOI Foundation

Photo: `R4cH3L on Flickr

Strategic .org••••••

CrossRef: membershipassociation of publishers
Founded for strategic reasons:services best achieved
collaboratively
16 member board of directors
from membership
Broad church: Commercial,societies, non-profits,
university presses, OA
publishers – 66% non-profit
All subjects: STM, humanities,
social science, professional
A powerful NETWORKTechnicalInfrastructure• Unique identification• Persistent citation andlinking - DOIs

• Managed system – nobroken links• Content discoverable

Provides an organizationalfoundation for widespread linking• One agreement with CrossRef
is a linking agreement with allother CrossRef participants• Membership association forcooperative development of adigital linking infrastructure• Business model neutralServicesPowered byiThenticate•Cross-publisher
reference linking•Cross-publisher
Cited-by linking•Cross-publisher metadata
feeds•Cross-publisher
plagiarism screening•Cross-publisher
update identification•Cross-publisher
funder identification•Cross-publisher
text and data mining

Lots of content
70,000,000
60,000,000
50,000,000
40,000,000
30,000,000
20,000,000
10,000,000
02002 2003 2004

2005 2006

2007 20082009 20102011 20122013 2014

More than journals

Components,
Conferences,
1,714,767
3,810,759
Books,8,764,312

Standards,
131,652

Journals,
54,495,157

Lots of users getting to content
1,100,000,000

825,000,000

550,000,000

275,000,000

02002 2003 2004

2005 2006

2007 20082009 20102011 20122013 2014
Est

5,375 participating organizations
1,906 libraries

Identifiers + Metadata
Services + Community=Powerful system for collaboration: persistent linking,discoverability, trustA standard way of reporting funding
sources for published scholarly researchNational Institutes of Health
NIH? N.I.H.? National Institute of Health?
Abbreviations, misspellings, translations...

Why does this matter?
Funding bodies cannot easily track the publishedoutput of funding
Publishers cannot easily report which articles result
from research supported by specific funders orgrants
Institutions cannot easily link funding received topublished output
Lack of standard metadata for funding sources
makes it difficult to analyse or data mineFundersPublishers

Established award
systems and research
management processes

Established publishingand peer-review
systems

Relationship withresearchers funded byagencies

Relationship withauthors submitting
manuscripts

FundRef Registry
8,000 funder names and ID numbers fromcurated Elsevier SciVal registry, donated toFundRef
Hosted by CrossRef, available under CC0
Will be added to and updated
Publishers to use this list to ensure
consistencywww.crossref.org/fundref/fundref_registry.html

DOI

Funding
SourceAwardNumber

DOIFunding
SourceAwardNumber

Look up funding data

http://search.crossref.org/fundrefORCID
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5993-8592

Live ORCID iDs - 964,638
Works with unique DOIs - 2,222,880
ORCID iDs in CrossRef - 134,386

Data

Data

Data

Data

http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001975

Collaboration: DOI
CommunityCollaboration: DOI
Community

Multiple IDs & Orgs
• CrossRef DOIs
• DataCite DOIs
• Japan Link Center DOIs
• Other DOI Registration Agencies• Funder IDs• ORCID IDs• [License metadata]APIs essential• Combination of free and “for fee” APIs
• Charge for services - not data
• http://api.crossref.org/

http://api.crossref.org/works?filter=has-orcid:trueIdentifiers + Metadata
Services + Community=
Powerful system for collaboration: persistent linking,discoverability, trust