Blog

It’s me! Back in January I wrote, The one constant in Crossref’s 20 years has been change. This continues to be true, and the latest change is that I’m happy to say that I will be staying on as Executive Director of Crossref. At the recent Crossref board meeting, I rescinded my resignation and the board happily accepted this.

It seems like only yesterday…

On January 19th, 2000 a new not-for-profit organization was registered in New York State. It was called Publishers International Linking Association, Inc but was more commonly referred to as “CrossRef”. This means that Crossref will be 20 years old on January 19th, 2020 so I wanted to mark the occasion with a short post. We are planning more ways to mark our 20th anniversary later this year so keep a lookout.

Crossref strives for balance. Different people have always wanted different things from us and, since our founding, we have brought together diverse organizations to have discussions—sometimes contentious—to agree on how to help make scholarly communications better. Being inclusive can mean slow progress, but we’ve been able to advance by being flexible, fair, and forward-thinking. We have been helped by the fact that Crossref’s founding organizations defined a clear purpose in our original certificate of incorporation, which reads:

With a smaller group than usual, we’re dedicating this year’s annual meeting to hear what you value about Crossref. Which initiatives would you put first and/or last? Where would you have us draw the line between mission and ambition? What is “core” for you? How could/should we adapt for the future in order to meet your needs? Striving for balance Different people want different things from us. As Aristotle said: “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

As the end of the year approaches it’s useful to look back and reflect on what we’ve achieved over the last 12 months—a lot! To be honest, there were some things we didn’t get done—or didn’t make as much progress with as we hoped—but that happens when you have an ambitious agenda. However, we also got some things done that we didn’t expect to or that weren’t even on our radar at the end of 2017—this is inevitable as the research and scholarly communications landscape is rapidly changing.

At the end of last year, Paul Peters—CEO of our member Hindawi—became the new Chair of the Crossref Board. The announcement was made in Singapore at our first LIVE Annual ever held in Asia. I caught up with Paul back in London, UK, where he answered a few questions about what he hopes to bring to the Board, and to the Crossref community as a whole.

We are delighted to report that last year Crossref welcomed a record-breaking 1,939 new members and, because our member base is growing so rapidly in both headcount and geography—with the highest number of new members joining from Asia—we thought it was a good time to reiterate what Crossref is all about, as well as show off a little about the things we are proud to have achieved in 2017.

Crossref is governed by a board of directors that meets in person three times a year in March, July and November. At the July meeting the board typically spends a significant amount of time on strategic planning in addition to its usual activities such as financial oversight, approving investment in new services based on staff and committee recommendations, reviewing and approving policies and fees for new and existing services and generally making sure Crossref is healthy and well run.