Sprints at Crossref
Our sprints are collaborative events where members of the research community come together to explore and create with Crossref’s open metadata. They provide space to test ideas, prototype tools, and address shared challenges across scholarly communication.
Open to both technical and non-technical participants, sprints encourage collaboration across roles and disciplines. Each event is shaped by the community, with themes ranging from research integrity to accessibility of metadata. Details of upcoming sprints are announced on our website and Community Forum.
Information about our previous metadata sprints.
About our Sprints
Crossref makes research objects easy to find, cite, link, assess, and reuse. We exist to make scholarly communications better, and we emphasise the community’s role in contributing to this goal. One way we support this is through our sprints—collaborative events that bring together people from across the research ecosystem to experiment, prototype, and create new tools and approaches using Crossref’s open scholarly metadata.
Sprints are designed to encourage exploration and teamwork. They are open to librarians, research integrity specialists, scientometricians, meta-researchers, data scientists, coders, engineers, and anyone interested in open scholarly infrastructure. Participation does not require advanced technical skills—those with a non-technical background are equally welcome.
The events focus on making use of Crossref’s rich metadata, which now contains hundreds of millions of records contributed by thougsands of members worldwid. This metadata is widely used in reference managers, catalogues, dashboards, and research applications, and is also available directly via our REST API and annual public data file. By working with these resources, sprint participants can test ideas, solve problems, and develop prototypes that benefit the wider community.
Typical sprint themes include:
- Integrity of the scholarly record – detecting signals and patterns around research reliability.
- Quality and completeness – improving metadata accuracy and coverage.
- Metadata for everyone – making our tools more accessible to all.
- Metadata by everyone – enabling broader community contributions.
- Outside the box – new ideas that don’t fit traditional categories.
Sprints also provide a space for networking, knowledge sharing, and building connections across disciplines. Participants can pitch new projects or join existing ones, often continuing their collaborations beyond the event.
Each sprint is shaped by the community, and details about upcoming opportunities—including themes, format, and participation guidelines—are announced in advance on our website and Community Forum.
We are committed to inclusivity and diversity at our sprints and strive to remove barriers to participation wherever possible.
If you have any questions, contact events@crossref.org.
Follow us on:
