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Because Crossref is all about rallying the scholarly community to work together, reference linking is an obligation for all Crossref members and for all current journal content.
It is encouraged for other content types as well, such as books and conference proceedings.
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Persistent links enhance scholarly communications. Reference linking offers important benefits:
Reciprocity: Publishers’ content is linked together and more discoverable because all members link their references.
Crossref acts as a clearinghouse, negotiating reciprocal agreements among all its members so that individual members can avoid the inconvenience of signing bilateral agreements to link to persistent content on other platforms. The result is a scholarly communications infrastructure that enables the exchange of ideas and knowledge.
Discoverability: Research travels further when everyone links their references. Because persistent identifier links don’t break if implemented correctly, they will always lead readers to the content they’re looking for, including yours. When the PIDs are displayed, anyone can copy and share them.
This will enable better tracking of where and when people are talking about and sharing scholarly content, including in social media.
Reference linking means hyperlinking to Crossref DOIs when you create your citation list.
This makes it possible for readers to follow a DOI link from the reference list of a published work to the location of the full-text document on a member’s publishing platform, building a network infrastructure that enhances scholarly communications on the web.
Reference linking is accomplished by members and their production teams, with the assistance of authors and editors who add the links to each reference in their articles.
After your organization becomes a Crossref member, you can start to look up the DOIs for your references so that you can add the links to your articles’ reference lists.
There is no charge for reference linking.
Reference linking is required for all Crossref members and for all current journal content. Reference linking is encouraged, but not required, for other content types such as books and conference proceedings.
How do I find DOIs for my references?
Does all of our content have to have reference linking?
Reference linking is a membership obligation for all current journal content. However, members are strongly encouraged to include it for both journal backfile content and non-journal content such as books.
Please contact our member services team with any questions or to get set up, or contact our technical support specialists for any technical or troubleshooting questions.