Retractions and corrections from Retraction Watch are now available in Crossref’s REST API. Back in September 2023, we announced the acquisition of the Retraction Watch database with an ongoing shared service. Since then, they have sent us regular updates, which are publicly available as a csv file. Our aim has always been to better integrate these retractions with our existing metadata, and today we’ve met that goal.
This is the first time we have supplemented our metadata with a third-party data source.
As a provider of foundational open scholarly infrastructure, Crossref is an adopter of the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI). In December 2024 we posted our updated POSI self-assessment. POSI provides an invaluable framework for transparency, accountability, susatinability and community alignment. There are 21 other POSI adopters.
Together, we are now undertaking a public consultation on proposed revisions for a version 2.0 release of the principles, which would update the current version 1.
https://0-doi-org.libus.csd.mu.edu/10.13003/axeer1ee
In our previous entry, we explained that thorough evaluation is key to understanding a matching strategy’s performance. While evaluation is what allows us to assess the correctness of matching, choosing the best matching strategy is, unfortunately, not as simple as selecting the one that yields the best matches. Instead, these decisions usually depend on weighing multiple factors based on your particular circumstances. This is true not only for metadata matching, but for many technical choices that require navigating trade-offs.
Looking back over 2024, we wanted to reflect on where we are in meeting our goals, and report on the progress and plans that affect you - our community of 21,000 organisational members as well as the vast number of research initiatives and scientific bodies that rely on Crossref metadata.
In this post, we will give an update on our roadmap, including what is completed, underway, and up next, and a bit about what’s paused and why.
Crossref’s Similarity Check service is used by our members to detect text overlap with previously published work that may indicate plagiarism of scholarly or professional works. Manuscripts can be checked against millions of publications from other participating Crossref members and general web content using the iThenticate text comparison software from Turnitin.
The 2000 members who already make use of Similarity Check upload almost 2,000,000 documents each month to look for matching text in other publications.
We have some great news for those 2000 members –– a completely new version of iThenticate is on its way, and will start to roll out to users in the coming months.
New functionality has been developed based on your feedback over the past few years and includes:
An improved Document Viewer that makes PDFs searchable and accessible, with responsive design for ease of use on different screen sizes. All of the functionality of the Viewer and the Text-only reports in the previous version have been streamlined into just two views: Sources Overview and All Sources.
Improved exclusion options to make refining matches even easier. Smarter citation detection now identifies probable citations both inline and in reference sections.
A new “Content Portal” where you can see what percentage of your own content has been successfully indexed for the iThenticate comparison database, and download reports of indexing errors that need to be fixed.
A new API for integration with manuscript submission systems allows display of the largest matching word count and the top 5 source matches alongside the Similarity Score.
The maximum number of pages and file size per document has been doubled to 800 pages/200 MB.
The new document viewer in iThenticate v2.0
Improved reference exclusion
Crossref members can use Similarity Check directly by logging in, or via an integration with a submission/peer review system. We are working with many system providers to bring v2.0 to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, we are looking for members to help us test the new system directly in the iThenticate user interface. If you are interested and can spare a few hours some time in the next month please let me know.
And if your organization is not yet using Similarity Check to assess the originality of the manuscripts you receive do take a look at the many benefits the service has to offer.
