As we finish celebrating our 25th anniversary, we can look back on a truly transformational year, defined by the successful delivery of several long-planned, foundational projects—as well as updates to our teams, services, and fees—that position Crossref for success over the next quarter century as essential open scholarly infrastructure. In our update at the end of 2024, we highlighted that we had restructured our leadership team and paused some projects. The changes made in 2024 positioned us for a year of getting things done in 2025. We launched cross-functional programs, modernised our systems, strengthened connections with our growing global community, and streamlined a bunch of technical and business operations while continuing to grow our staff, members, content, relationships, and community connections.
Crossref turned twenty-five this year, and our 2025 Annual Meeting became more than a celebration—it was a shared moment to reflect on how far open scholarly infrastructure has come and where we, as a community, are heading next.
Over two days in October, hundreds of participants joined online and in local satellite meetings in Madrid, Nairobi, Medan, Bogotá, Washington D.C., and London––a reminder that our community spans the globe. The meetings offered updates, community highlights, and a look at what’s ahead for our shared metadata network––including plans to connect funders, platforms, and AI tools across the global research ecosystem.
In my latest conversations with research funders, I talked with Hannah Hope, Open Research Lead at Wellcome, and Melissa Harrison, Team Leader of Literature Services at Europe PMC. Wellcome and Europe PMC are working together to realise the potential of funding metadata and the Crossref Grant Linking System for, among other things, programmatic grantee reporting. In this blog, we explore how this partnership works and how the Crossref Grant Linking System is supporting Wellcome in realising their Open Science vision.
In January 2026, our new annual membership fee tier takes effect. The new tier is US$200 for member organisations that operate on publishing revenue or expenses (whichever is higher) of up to US$1,000 annually. We announced the Board’s decision, making it possible in July, and––as you can infer from Amanda’s latest blog––this is the first such change to the annual membership fee tiers in close to 20 years!
The new fee tier resulted from the consultation process and fees review undertaken as part of the Resourcing Crossref for Future Sustainability program, carried out with the help of our Membership and Fees Committee (made up of representatives from member organisations and community partners). The program is ongoing, and the new fee tier, intended to make Crossref membership more accessible, is one of the first changes it helped us determine.
Crossref Service Providers are organisations that work collaboratively with us to help support member obligations and best practices, such as providing rich metadata on behalf of members.
Service Providers are organisations or systems that are not necessarily eligible themselves to be members as they are not grant-giving or don’t steward their own works, i.e. they don’t create Crossref DOI records of any type. But they do work on behalf of our members, for example as hosting platforms, manuscript or grant management systems, XML/metadata creators, and offer general technical services that are chosen by members to work on their behalf to create, enrich, or retrieve Crossref metadata.
All a member needs to do is contact our membership team to request that their Service Provider be set up with permissions to either deposit/edit their metadata records, or retrieve CIted-by counts, for example. Some members also choose to have a contact at their Service Providers receive the regular reports (such as conflict and resolution reports).
Members looking for advice on how to evaluate Service providers, can check out the guidance ‘working with a service provider’ in our documentation. Then, all a member needs to do is contact our membership team to request that their Service Provider be set up with the relevant permissions in our system.
NB: For some years, we had a semi-formal Service Provider program, where each SP would pay a flat annual fee of USD $2k to Crossref and have early input into new features and product roadmaps. This was disbanded around 2022. In 2026 we will reintroduce a more formal program. The following information relates to the previous SP program.
Allen Press aims to inspire your audience with an innovative blend of printing, marketing, publishing and distribution services crafted with the latest technology. We also serve a unique role in assisting the STEM community share ideas that improve the world. Combined with our state-of-the-art equipment and a team of seasoned pros, we provide rapid production and unmatched quality at competitive prices. Our commitment to excellence and attention to detail are more than just goals—they define how we help our customers.
As the STM publishing landscape evolves, so do Aptara’s service offerings. Our OA and publishing fee collection service, SciPris, continues to grow in clientele and functionality, keeping pace with evolving publishing agreement types. With PE/PM, copyediting, typesetting, and conversion services still at our core, the expansion of our peer review management, accessibility compliance/tagging, AI/ML, AR/VR, data mining, and content enrichment service lines allow publishers to source end-to-end workflows with Aptara. See our revamped web site for more.
Aries Systems transforms the way scholarly publishers bring high-value content to the world. Our innovative workflow solutions manage the complexities of modern print and electronic publishing—from submission to editorial management and peer review, to production tracking and publishing channel distribution. As the publishing environment evolves, Aries Systems is committed to delivering solutions that help publishers and scholars enhance the discovery and dissemination of human knowledge on a global scale. Publish faster, publish smarter, with Aries Systems.
Atypon was founded in 1996, driven by the desire to democratize scientific research by expanding its availability, which meant giving scholarly publishers the software that they needed to excel in a new—and often intimidating—digital environment.
Atypon’s initial development efforts resulted in Literatum, our online publishing and website development platform, first released in 1999. What was a five-person technology startup in Silicon Valley, is now an influential global organisation, with a team of more than 480 in nine offices across the United States, the UK, Jordan, the Czech Republic, and Georgios’s native Greece.
Our vision for founding Cadmore Media was born out of a broad ambition to transform the dissemination of video and audio content in the scholarly and professional world through expert technology. In addition to creating our own products, we aim to facilitate industry-wide innovation by leading industry efforts to shape and promote best practices and standards, thus benefiting any organisation or service whose purpose is to publish or structure research and professional information.
eJournalPress is focused on providing web-based technology solutions for the scholarly publishing community. The company was initially founded as a software consulting service assisting companies in designing, programming, and deploying software and mission critical systems. In 1999 eJournalPress utilized this skill set to work with journals and publishers creating a new generation of web-based software tools to support manuscript submission, tracking, and peer review. The result of this engineering effort is EJPress.
At Ex Libris, we believe in the value of education and research. Our mission is to allow academic institutions to create, manage, and share knowledge. With better tools, our customers achieve their goals and further academic initiatives.
Ingenta was formed in 1998 and floated on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange in April 2000. After a number of smaller acquisitions, the Group expanded through a merger with Vista.
Ingenta headquarters are in Oxford, UK with another office in New Jersey, USA. With industry experience going back nearly 40 years and more than 150 employees, Ingenta serves over 400 trade and scholarly publishers.
KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. (KGL) combines the content and technology expertise of Cenveo Publisher Services and Cenveo Learning with Sheridan Journal Services and Sheridan PubFactory under the umbrella of the CJK Group.
MPS, a leading global provider of platforms, and content, and learning solutions for the digital world, was established as an Indian subsidiary of Macmillan (Holdings) Limited in 1970. The long service history as a captive business allowed MPS to build unique capabilities and talents through strategic partner programs. MPS is now a global partner to the world’s leading enterprises, learning companies, publishers, libraries, and content aggregators.
Nova Techset is a leading supplier of prepress services to the STM and academic publishing world. We provide pre-editing, copyediting, composition and ePub solutions as well as the full range of project management services for books and journals. With delivery centers in Bengaluru and Chennai, and offices in the UK and the US, we employ a staff of over 800 skilled and experienced personnel and produce over 1,000,000 book and journal pages a year.
Scholastica was founded in 2012 in response to a growing need in academia for an easier, more modern way to peer review research articles and publish high-quality open access journals online.
At Sheridan, we have deep roots in the book, journal, magazine, and catalog markets we serve, and our seasoned experts are not only knowledgeable about the conventions of these industries, but also their exciting new frontiers. As part of The CJK Group, under the brand of Sheridan, we’re organized by five locations, each providing specific services to our key markets.
Silverchair believes that innovation can fulfill the greatest promises of scholarship. As the leading independent platform partner for scholarly and professional publishers, we serve our growing community through flexible technology and unparalleled services. We build and host websites, online products, and digital libraries for our clients’ content, enabling researchers and professionals to maximize their contributions to our world. Our vision is to help publishers thrive, evolve, and fulfill their missions.
De Gruyter publishes first-class scholarship and has done so for more than 270 years. An international, independent publisher headquartered in Berlin - and with further offices in Boston, Beijing, Basel, Vienna, Warsaw and Munich - it publishes over 1,300 new book titles each year and more than 900 journals in the humanities, social sciences, medicine, mathematics, engineering, computer sciences, natural sciences, and law. The publishing house also offers a wide range of digital media, including open access journals and books.
