Earlier this year, we reported on the roundtable discussion event that we had organised in Frankfurt on the heels of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2023. This event was the second in the series of roundtable events that we are holding with our community to hear from you how we can all work together to preserve the integrity of the scholarly record - you can read more about insights from these events and about ISR in this series of blogs.
Crossref is undertaking a large program, dubbed 'RCFS' (Resourcing Crossref for Future Sustainability) that will initially tackle five specific issues with our fees. We haven’t increased any of our fees in nearly two decades, and while we’re still okay financially and do not have a revenue growth goal, we do have inclusion and simplification goals. This report from Research Consulting helped to narrow down the five priority projects for 2024-2025 around these three core goals:
The Crossref Nominating Committee is inviting expressions of interest to join the Board of Directors of Crossref for the term starting in January 2025. The committee will gather responses from those interested and create the slate of candidates that our membership will vote on in an election in September.
Expressions of interest will be due Monday, May 27th, 2024
This is an exciting time to join the board, as we have a number of active projects underway: We are considering resourcing Crossref for a sustainable future and board members will be part of deciding any changes to our fees scheme and overseeing its implementation.
This past year has been a captivating journey of immersion within the Crossref community, a mix of online interactions and meaningful in-person experiences. From the engaging Sustainability Research and Innovation Conference in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, to the impactful webinars conducted globally, this has been more than just a professional endeavour; it has been a personal exploration of collaboration, insights, and a shared commitment to pushing the boundaries of scholarly communication.
Cited-by supports members who display citations, enabling the community to discover connections between research outputs.
Scholars use citations to critique and build on existing research, acknowledging the contributions of others. Members can include references in their metadata deposits which Crossref uses to create links between works that cite each other. The number of citations each work receives is visible to anyone through our public APIs. Through our Cited-by service, members who deposit reference metadata can retrieve everything they need to display citations on their website.
Members who use this service are helping readers to:
easily navigate to related research,
see how the work has been received by the wider community,
explore how ideas evolve over time by highlighting connections between works.
Watch the introductory Cited-by animation in your language:
Cited-by begins with references deposited as part of the metadata records for your content. Learn more about depositing references.
A member registers content for a work, the citing paper. This metadata deposit includes the reference list. Crossref automatically checks these references for matches to other registered content. If this is successful, a relationship between the two works is created. Crossref logs these relationships and updates the citation counts for each work. You can retrieve citation counts through our public APIs.
Members can use the Cited-by service to retrieve the full list of citing works, along with all the bibliographic details needed to display them on their website.
Note that citations from Crossref may differ from those provided by other services because we only look for links between Crossref-registered works and don’t share the same method to find matches.
Obligations and fees for Cited-by
Participation in Cited-by is optional, but encouraged.
There is no charge for Cited-by.
Depositing references is not a requirement, but strongly encouraged if you are using Cited-by.
Best practice for Cited-by
Because citations can happen at any time, Cited-by links must be kept up-to-date. Members should either check regularly for new citations or (if performing XML queries) set the alert attribute to true. This means the search will be saved in the system and you’ll get an alert when there is a new match.
Depositing your own references is strongly encouraged if you use Cited-by. If you don’t, the citations you retrieve will not include those from your own works. This is likely to lead to under-reporting of citations counts by at least 20% and you are missing the opportunity to point readers to other similar works on your platform.
Also in the metadata is the number of citations a work has received, under the tag "is-referenced-by-count".
To retrieve the full list of citations you need be a member using Cited-by. While anyone can use an API query to see the number of citations a work has received, members can retrieve a full list of citing DOIs and callback notifications informing them when one of their works has been cited. Details of the citing works can be displayed on your website alongside the article.
In 2023 we are developing a new API endpoint that will make citations more accessible to the community, for a preview see this announcement.