PID strategies are being written around the world right now, and the decisions being made will shape the scholarly record for decades. After 25 years running open scholarly infrastructure—now on behalf of 25,000 members in 167 countries—Crossref has an informed perspective on what those decisions should ideally rest on. Today we’re setting it out in our’s first position paper: Persistent identifiers in research infrastructure policy: the need for a holistic approach. You can read it online or download the PDF; it’s a 16-minute read.
Research is rarely limited to a single contributor performing a single role. Behind every research output are people contributing in various ways: software development, data analyses, methodology design, and much more. Often, the same person contributes in several of these ways. Until now, Crossref metadata could only capture part of that picture, but this is changing with Schema 5.5.
Through user experience research (UXR) initiatives that take into account our diverse membership and community, we can have a continuous, deeper understanding of the role of metadata in our members’ workflows, and ensure that our work continues to meet our community’s needs. Your support is the key to this process, and will positively impact the wider community - and if you’d like to start today, you can take part in our latest initiative: help us improve our Events page by sharing your thoughts on the page’s feedback form.
Our 2026 Community Update took place on 13 May. Two calls, one for the eastern and one for the western time zone, highlighted how our global community is growing, how we’re refining the metadata that supports trust in the scholarly record, and connecting records more effectively through our latest tools.
As Crossref membership continues to grow, finding ways to help organisations participate is an important part of our mission. Although Crossref membership is open to all organisations that produce scholarly and professional materials, cost and technical challenges can be barriers to joining for many.
Our Global Equitable Membership (GEM) Program aims to provide greater membership equity and accessibility to organisations in the world’s least economically advantaged countries. Eligible members pay no membership or record registration fees. Eligibility for the program is based on a member’s country. Seeing its effectiveness in increasing participation in the research nexus from previously underrepresented regions, this year we are expanding the GEM program to include 18 new countries.
Overview of the first 3 years of GEM
The program began in January 2023 with 214 existing members. By the end of 2025, we had 628 organisations under the GEM program. Of these, 535 are independent members, and 89 members work through one of our sponsors. To date, GEM program members have contributed approximately 334,000 works to the Research Nexus.
Global equitable membership
2023
2024
2025
New members joining
129
127
151
Total member count
327
458
628
Total number of Crossref GEM members by country until the end of 2025:
Membership Density in GEM Program Countries until the end of 2025
Program expansion in 2026
Starting on 1st of January 2026, we’re excited to invite organisations from Angola, Belize, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Dominica, Eswatini, Fiji, Grenada, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Timor Leste, and Uzbekistan to join Crossref and register their content and metadata with us without membership or record registration fees. There are 711 existing Crossref members based in these countries who are now eligible for the program, bringing the overall number of GEM members to 1339 across 77 countries (that’s close to 5% of all Crossref members).
In creating our eligibility list, we refer to existing sources. For the first three years of the program, our list was predominantly based on the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) classification. In 2026, we leveraged additional sources to curate our list, resulting in the inclusion of 18 new countries in the program. Following community feedback, we now refer to the IDA, the IDA Blend List, and the United Nations Least Developed Countries list. In our choices, we also keep abreast of the global situation and conversations about supporting equitability in scholarly publishing and in the future, we may consider other factors too.
We will review our lists and the eligibility criteria annually and note any changes on our website. Members whose country moves on or off the GEM Program will be notified of any upcoming fees (or the removal of fees) with adequate time to plan and budget accordingly.
Although the GEM program reduces financial barriers, many small organisations may still need administrative, technical, and language support provided by our Sponsors, and we will continue working with suitable organisations to make participation in Crossref easier.
