8 minute read.Crossref at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2025
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the largest book fair in the world, and therefore a key event on our calendar. Held annually in Frankfurt, Germany, the 77th Frankfurt Book Fair (October 15–19, 2025) saw 118,000 trade visitors and 120,000 private visitors from 131 countries. The Crossref booth was located, as usual, in Hall 4.0 where all the stands with information about academic publishing can be found. Four Crossref colleagues attended the Book Fair this year, and in this blog post, you can read more about their meetings, experiences, and plans.
First timer fun at the Frankfurt Fair - Helena
Even though I’ve been working in scholarly comms for over 10 years, I’d never had a chance to visit the Frankfurt Book Fair. I was therefore really excited to have an opportunity to attend this year, and it didn’t disappoint! I arrived on Monday, October 13, in time for the STM dinner, which proved a great opportunity to meet with Crossref members and collaborators. On Tuesday, I attended the STM conference with the exciting theme of ‘The role of publishers in science diplomacy’. I think my favorite part of the day was the last panel, where the panelists realised that even though they represent different groups, in the end, they all have the same goals and are all working towards better science and dissemination.
On Wednesday, it was time to head over to our booth, where we prepared for the interesting conversations ahead. My meetings were mainly focused on collaborations in the area of research integrity, as Crossref plans to run pilots with potential partners next year. In-person meetings at the fair were a good opportunity to discuss in more detail which kinds of integrity checks could be useful to our members. I also had several meetings with organizations functioning as Service Providers –– depositing content on behalf of members –– who are eagerly awaiting the launch of our renewed Service Providers program next year. In these conversations, we shared our thinking about requirements for Crossref Service Providers and got input from organizations with experience serving our member community. Overall, it was a great opportunity to see members and collaborators in person, and I’ve already put the 2026 Frankfurt Book Fair in my calendar!
An exciting comeback - Maryna
If last year, I was a debutante at the Frankfurt Book Fair, 2025 marked an exciting comeback. It’s always a pleasure to spend time chatting with people you usually only meet through email or Zoom. Working remotely as part of a global team is something I truly value about Crossref, but it also makes those in-person moments even more special. You get to solve issues that have been sitting on your to-do list over lunch, brainstorm ideas while walking to the venue, get immediate advice in a meeting—and, of course, talk about dogs over dinner.
Frankfurt was busy but well organised. Our booth was lively with a mix of planned and spontaneous meetings. It was nice to reconnect with members and sponsors I’ve worked with over the years. We even gave an early look at the new Participation Reports before the official release (what a thrill!). There were good conversations about deprecating co-access, the importance of title transfers, and how we can keep improving the member experience. One highlight: I spoke with a prospective member about our membership model and fee structure, and they joined the following week! Their account is already active, with a prefix assigned, which was great to see.
Another key topic was the importance of ROR IDs. I talked with several publishers about how they could be implemented across other systems. At one point, I spotted an issue with unregistered DOIs and was able to fix it on the spot by finalising a title transfer—we’d had permission but never received the formal request—so it was satisfying to close that loop in real time.
Being a relatively small team serving a global membership of more than 23,000 and growing, it’s not possible to meet with every member face-to-face to respond to every question. Our team works hard to respond to all queries by email, but it’s undeniably faster and more productive in person. That’s why we keep returning to the Frankfurt Book Fair year after year—you can definitely count on seeing us again next year!
Third time at bat - Luis
The Frankfurt Book Fair is always an incredible opportunity to connect with our community. We come prepared with highlights of the year, plans for developments and upcoming releases, and remind the members we meet to participate and vote in the annual elections. But most of what we learn happens during the informal moments––meetings, drop-ins, and chats over coffee and tea––where people discuss what they’re working on, trends, and interests of the scholarly and publishing community.
This year, some of those conversations included meeting someone working with groups from Egypt and the UAE who are developing tools around our metadata. They wanted to talk through REST API use, recent Crossref updates, and how retraction metadata could fit into their systems. Another person opened their participation report with us and were surprised to see their metadata showing 0% despite the team believing they were sending complete metadata, which led to a discussion about getting their internal workflows running again.
Booth days always fly by, but they’re deeply informative and insightful for teams that participate in person, as we can “cross-check” (pun intended) how our different support mechanisms help the community and how well we’re delivering our communications. There is a good mix of problem-solving and catching-up; often, we see members who prepare a list of questions because they find it easier to sit and navigate through them with our support or membership colleagues. Sometimes it’s about refreshing their understanding of what Crossref is and what we do, especially during team changes. We also spoke with a publisher preparing to adopt Crossmark. They wanted to check they were handling updates and relationships correctly, and mentioned that increasing transparency is becoming a priority for them. Someone else, working closely with a repository, asked about using the REST API or Metadata Plus to enrich their records.
A few visitors simply needed clarity––one was pleased to learn they could register reports and datasets after being told otherwise. Another visitor who registers a small number of book DOIs each year asked whether the Web Deposit Form was still the best fit. We walked through the Record Registration Form together, and its new editing features helped them plan for upcoming changes.
Personally, I enjoy seeing the cultural and organisational diversity of existing and potential Crossref members, ambassadors, sponsors, allies and colleagues from all over the world at our booth. If you have the opportunity to attend the Book Fair next year, please visit our booth and say hello!
This year’s Frankfurt Veteran - Paul
I think this is my 5th (?) Frankfurt book fair, and each year I come away thinking how much I appreciate the opportunity to speak with our members face to face, and I get to see and hear the impact that Crossref has, which is always such a pleasure.
This year, there were only four of us in attendance, and it felt busier than ever. We had a lot of pre-booked meetings at our wonderfully designed booth again (thanks to the amazing work of our colleague Rosa) but we also had lots of ad-hoc meetings, where members came up to say “hello”, “thank you” or ask about that really knotty, niche problem that they have, which they are not sure how to explain over email. From a technical support perspective, this is great, as we can go through these issues and get a resolution––or a solid background––without the delay and confusion of long email threads. I also worked with a member who got their IT department to send over a file there and then for us to work through and try to navigate a difficult question regarding reference matching and whether the simple text query form worked using an API, which others could use. These were just two examples of many in which it was much easier to sit down and work through issues directly at the fair.
So I would always say that if you are at the Frankfurt book fair, and you have one of these issues then it is a great opportunity to come by, say hello and work through it with us. We will send out a reminder before the fair in 2026 to get any meetings booked, or just come find us at the fair.
A highlight for me this year was also showing some of our members our new Participation Report. It’s had a visual update as well as some new functionality: you can download a gap report that lists DOI numbers of records that are missing the metadata element you choose, making it easier to identify and update missing metadata. I always like attending the Frankfurt Book Fair and so might be there next year. It’s an important opportunity for all Crossref colleagues to engage and meet our members––many for the first time.
Next year
Feeling inspired after all the great meetings and conversations we had this year, we immediately started planning for next year! We’ll definitely be in Frankfurt in 2026, where you can find our team at the Crossref booth. We’re also planning to organize another roundtable on the Monday before the fair, so put October 5-9, 2026, in your calendars and stay tuned for more details.
