Crossref is a membership organisation, and it’s the global community of members that creates the Research Nexus together. Meeting our community locally is a highlight and an important learning experience. This year, we started by connecting with a growing community in Accra, Ghana - our first in-person event in the country included in our GEM program. From 14 members in 2023 to 31 in 2025, our community in Ghana is blooming.
At its core, Crossref Accra 2025 was about showing up for the community in Ghana - listening, learning, and building together. On the 20th of March, we welcomed 66 participants: journal editors, university staff, librarians, and researchers. People who are doing the real work of making scholarly publishing happen in the region.
In 2022, we set out to update our DOI display guidelines with the intention to adopt the proposals in 2025. It’s important to note from the outset that we are not mandating any immediate changes to the DOI display guidelines. Instead, we are working with our community to co-create a solution that addresses the diverse needs of all users, rather than imposing technical changes that may not suit everyone.
Sponsors make Crossref membership accessible to organizations that would otherwise face barriers to joining us. They also provide support to facilitate participation, which increases the amount and diversity of metadata in the global Research Nexus. This in turn improves discoverability and transparency of scholarship behind the works.
We are looking for an organization to perform an audit of, and propose changes to, the structure and information architecture underlying our website, with the aim of making it easier for everyone in our community to navigate the website and find the information they need.
Proposals will be evaluated on a rolling basis. We encourage submissions by May 15, 2025.
The quickest way to test whether your DOI and its associated metadata have been registered successfully (and your DOI is now active) is to enter your DOI link (DOI displayed as a link, such as https://doi-org.turing.library.northwestern.edu/10.13003/5jchdy) into a browser window, and check if it resolves correctly. DOI 10.13003/5jchdy has been registered so it is resolving to that DOI’s landing page (or, resolution URL). DOIs that have not been registered will resolve to a DOI NOT FOUND error message on doi.org, such as https://doi-org.turing.library.northwestern.edu/10.13003/unregisteredDOI.
If your DOI doesn’t resolve successfully, read on for more information about the process your submission goes through, why there might be a delay, and which messages you’ll receive depending on your submission method.
If you register your content using the web deposit form, your submission is sent to a submission queue. You’ll see a “success” message in the web deposit form confirming that your submission has been successfully sent to our submission queue, but this doesn’t mean that your registration is complete.
As your submission is processed in the queue, we send you two messages:
XML record email, subject line: Crossref WebDeposit - XML. This email includes the XML created by the web deposit form. Do keep this information, as it may be useful in the future. Receiving this email is a confirmation that your file has been received for processing, and entered into our submission queue.
submission log email, subject line: Crossref Submission ID. This email is sent once your XML has made it through the queue, includes your submission ID, tells you if your deposit has been successful, and provides the reason for any failure.
If your submission log email tells you that your submission was successful, your DOI is now live and active (or your update to metadata for an existing DOI has worked).
If your submission failed, please address the errors flagged in the confirmation, and resubmit. Learn more about error messages.
If you don’t receive your submission log email immediately, it’s probably because your submission is still in the queue. It can stay in the queue between several minutes and several hours depending on how large your submission file is, and how busy our submission queue is at that time. Learn more about how to view the submission queue.
If you don’t receive your submission log email and you can’t see your submission in the queue, it may be that your access to register content has been suspended due to unpaid invoices. If this is the case, please contact us.
Verify your registration - record registration form
The record registration form registers your record in real time, with no queueing or delay. If your submission has been successful, you’ll see a “success” message, which means your DOI is now live and active or your update to an existing record has worked.
Your “success” message will also contain a submission ID. If you need to, you can log into our admin tool using your account credentials and use this submission to view your deposit.
If your submission hasn’t been successful, you’ll see an error message explaining the problem.
Verify your registration - if you’re still using the deprecated Metadata Manager
The Metadata Manager tool is in beta and contains many bugs. It has been deprecated since 2021. We recommend using the web deposit form as an alternative, or the OJS plugin if your content is hosted on the OJS platform from PKP.
If you’re still using Metadata Manager, here’s how to verify your registration.
Unlike other content registration methods, Metadata Manager registers content in real-time - with no queueing of content. If your submission has been successful, you’ll see a “success” message, which means that your DOI is now live and active (or your update to metadata for an existing DOI has worked).
Your “success” message will also contain a submission ID. If you need to, you can log in to our admin tool using your account credentials and use this submission ID to view your deposit.
If your submission hasn’t been successful, you’ll see a warning symbol - click on this to see the error message explaining the problem.
Verify your registration - direct deposit of XML using our admin tool
Submissions using our admin tool are sent to a submission queue. Once your submission has been accepted into the queue we display a SUCCESS - Your batch submission was successfully received message. This means that your deposit has been submitted to our processing queue, but it has not yet been processed.
Registration of your content only occurs after your submission has worked its way through the queue, when you will receive an email with the subject line Crossref Submission ID, which includes your submission ID, tells you if your deposit has been successful, and provides the reason for any failure.
If your deposit has been successful, then your new DOI is live and active (or your update to metadata for an existing DOI has worked).
If your submission failed, please address the errors flagged in the email, and resubmit. Not sure what the error messages mean and what you need to do? Learn more about error messages.
If you don’t receive your submission log email immediately, it’s probably because your submission is still in the queue. It can stay in the queue between several minutes and several hours depending on how large your submission file is, and how busy our submission queue is at that time. Learn more about how to view the submission queue.
If you don’t receive your submission log email and you can’t see your submission in the queue, it may be that your access to register content has been suspended due to unpaid invoices. If this is the case, please contact us.
Verify your registration - XML deposit using HTTPS POST
Most items registered with us are submitted via HTTPS POST. When files are POSTed to our system, you’ll receive a 200 status message to confirm that we’ve received it. Your files are then added to a submission queue to await processing, and once your submission has been processed, you’ll receive a submission log (either by email or through the notification callback service if you have that enabled).
If your submission log shows a success, then your DOI is live and active (or your update to metadata for an existing DOI has worked).
If your submission log shows a failure, please address the errors flagged in the email, and resubmit. Not sure what the error messages mean and what you need to do? Learn more about error messages.
There may be a delay between your submission being received by the queue and completing processing. It can stay in the queue between several minutes and several hours depending on how large your submission file is, and how busy our submission queue is at that time. Learn more about how to view the submission queue.
Verify your registration - Crossref XML plugin for OJS
If you are using the Crossref XML plugin for OJS to send your submission to us directly, check the status of your deposit by clicking the Articles tab at the top of the plugin settings page.
Page owner: Isaac Farley | Last updated 2025-March-02
