Welcome back to our series of case studies of research funders using the Grant Linking System. In this interview, I talk with Cátia Laranjeira, PTCRIS Program Manager at FCCN|FCT, Portugal’s main public funding agency, about the agency’s approach to metadata, persistent identifiers, Open Science and Open Infrastructure.
With a holistic approach to the management, production and access to information on science, FCCN|FCT’s decision to implement the Grant Linking System within their processes was not simply a technical upgrade, but a coordinated effort to continue building a strong culture of openness. With the mantra “register once, reuse always”, FCCN|FCT efforts to embrace open funding metadata was only logical.
Repositories are home to a wide range of scholarly content; they often archive theses, dissertations, preprints, datasets, and other valuable outputs. These records are an important part of the research ecosystem and should be connected to the broader scholarly record. But to truly serve their purpose, repository records need to be connected to each other, to the broader research ecosystem, and to the people behind the research. Metadata is what makes that possible. Enhancing metadata is a way to tell a fuller, more accurate story of research. It helps surface relationships between works, people, funders, and institutions, and allows us as a community to build and use a more connected, more useful network of knowledge - what Crossref calls the ‘Research Nexus’.
The Crossref Grant Linking System (GLS) has been facilitating the registration, sharing and re-use of open funding metadata for six years now, and we have reached some important milestones recently! What started as an interest in identifying funders through the Open Funder Registry evolved to a more nuanced and comprehensive way to share and re-use open funding data systematically. That’s how, in collaboration with the funding community, the Crossref Grant Linking System was developed. Open funding metadata is fundamental for the transparency and integrity of the research endeavour, so we are happy to see them included in the Research Nexus.
Lots of exciting innovations are being made in scientific publishing, often raising fundamental questions about established publishing practices. In this guest post, Ludo Waltman and André Brasil discuss the recently launched MetaROR publish-review-curate platform and the questions it raises about good practices for Crossref DOI registration in this emerging landscape.
TL;DR: We no longer charge fees for members to participate in Crossmark, and we encourage all our members to register metadata about corrections and retractions - even if you can’t yet add the Crossmark button and pop-up box to your landing pages or PDFs.
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Research doesn’t stand still; even after publication, articles can be updated with supplementary data or corrections. When research outputs are is changed in this way the publisher should report and link it, so that those accessing and citing the content know if it’s been updated, corrected or even retracted. This also emphasizes the member’s commitment to the ongoing stewardship of research outputs.
Many people find and store articles to read later, either as PDFs on their laptop or on one of any number of reference management systems - when they come back to read and cite these articles, possibly many months later, they want to know if the version they have is current or not.
Removing Crossmark fees
To encourage even wider adoption of Crossmark, and to promote best practice around better reporting of corrections and retractions, we will no longer be charging additional fees for our Crossmark service. This change applies to all Crossmark metadata registered from 1 January 2020. All members are now encouraged to add Crossmark metadata and add the Crossmark button and pop-up box to their publications - and you can do so as part of your regular content registration.
Richer metadata gives important context
We know that there are many more corrections and retractions that are not yet being registered, and to address this, we are now asking all of our members to start registering metadata for significant updates to your publications, even if you don’t implement the Crossmark button and pop-up box on your content. Remember, anyone can access the Crossmark metadata through our public REST API, and start using it straight away - even if you’re not ready to implement the Crossmark button.
Check out how to get started; if you only want to deposit metadata, follow steps one through four. If you also want to add the Crossmark button and pop-up box to your web pages/PDFs so that readers can easily see when content has changed, then also follow the rest of the steps.
Crossmark
We launched Crossmark in 2012 to raise awareness of these critical changes, by asking Crossref members to:
help readers find out about the changes by placing a Crossmark button and pop-up box (which is consistent across all members making it recognizable to readers) on your landing pages and in PDFs
Members can also use Crossmark to register additional metadata about content, giving further context and background for the reader. These metadata appear in the “More Information” section of the Crossmark box. 7 million DOIs have some additional metadata, the most common being copyright statements, publication history, and peer review methods.
Anyone can access the Crossmark metadata through our public REST API, providing a myriad of opportunities for integration with other systems, and analysis of changes to the scholarly record.
Who has implemented Crossmark?
440 Crossref members have implemented Crossmark to date. 11.4 million DOIs have some Crossmark metadata.
Total DOIs
DOIs with Crossmark metadata
%
Journal articles
80,862,460
10,155,340
12.56%
Book chapters
14,040,646
792,953
5.65%
Conference Papers
6,175,733
457,237
7.40%
Datasets
1,862,852
19,206
1.03%
Books
753,298
239
0.03%
Monographs
469,333
23
0.00%
Of those, about 130,000 contain an update:
You can see which members or journals have implemented Crossmark by viewing the relevant Crossref Participation Report.
