Some of you who have submitted content to us during the first two months of 2021 may have experienced content registration delays. We noticed; you did, too.
The time between us receiving XML from members, to the content being registered with us and the DOI resolving to the correct resolution URL, is usually a matter of minutes. Some submissions take longer - for example, book registrations with large reference lists, or very large files from larger publishers can take up to 24 to 48 hours to process.
TL;DR: We have a Community Forum (yay!), you can come and join it here: community.crossref.org.
Community is fundamental to us at Crossref, we wouldn’t be where we are or achieve the great things we do without the involvement of you, our diverse and engaged members and users. Crossref was founded as a collaboration of publishers with the shared goal of making links between research outputs easier, building a foundational infrastructure making research easier to find, cite, link, assess, and re-use.
Event Data uncovers links between Crossref-registered DOIs and diverse places where they are mentioned across the internet. Whereas a citation links one research article to another, events are a way to create links to locations such as news articles, data sets, Wikipedia entries, and social media mentions. We’ve collected events for several years and make them openly available via an API for anyone to access, as well as creating open logs of how we found each event.
2020 wasn’t all bad. In April of last year, we released our first public data file. Though Crossref metadata is always openly available––and our board recently cemented this by voting to adopt the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI)––we’ve decided to release an updated file. This will provide a more efficient way to get such a large volume of records. The file (JSON records, 102.6GB) is now available, with thanks once again to Academic Torrents.
Cited-by gives our members full access to citations, helping them to build a picture of how research has been received by the community.
Scholars use citations to critique and build on existing research, acknowledging the contributions of others. Members can include references in their metadata deposits which Crossref uses to create links between works that cite each other. The number of citations each work receives is visible to anyone through our public APIs. Through our Cited-by service, members who deposit references for their content can retrieve and display itemized lists of works that cite their own.
Members who use this service are helping readers to:
easily navigate to related research,
see how the work has been received by the wider community, and
explore how ideas evolve over time by highlighting connections between works.
Watch the introductory Cited-by animation in your language:
Cited-by begins with depositing references as part of the metadata records for your content. Learn more about depositing references.
A member registers content for a work, the citing paper. This metadata deposit includes the references list. Crossref automatically checks these references for matches to other registered content. If this is successful, a citation is created.
Crossref logs the citations and updates the citation counts for each work. You can retrieve citation counts through our public APIs. Members who deposit references can sign up for the Cited-by service to retrieve the full list of citing works (not just the count), and can display them on their website. Cited-by complements citation counts by allowing access to the detail of each citation, even in cases where members have have chosen to set their references to limited or closed.
Note that citations from Crossref may differ from those provided by other services because we only look for links between Crossref-registered works and use a different matching algorithm.
Obligations and fees for Cited-by
Participation in Cited-by is optional, but encouraged
There is no charge for Cited-by
You must include references when you register content in order to be eligible for Cited-by
You only retrieve Cited-by metadata for your own content.
Best practice for Cited-by
Because citations can happen at any time, Cited-by links must be kept up-to-date. Members should either check regularly for new citations or (if performing XML queries) set the alert attribute to true. This means the search will be saved in the system and you’ll get an alert when there is a new match.
Also in the metadata is the number of citations a work has received, under the tag "is-referenced-by-count".
However, to retrieve the full list of citations for your own works, you need to register for Cited-by. While anyone can use an API query to see the number of citations a work has received, through Cited-by the member who deposited the work can retrieve a list of citing DOIs. Details of the citing works can be displayed on your website alongside the article.
In addition, Cited-by users can receive callback notifications or emails informing them when one of their works has been cited.
