In April 2025, we launched the metadata matching project, in order to add missing relationships to the scholarly metadata. We will do this by consolidating all existing and planned matching workflows, which enrich member-deposited metadata in Crossref. This unified service will result in a more complete research nexus. In this blog post, we share our latest milestone: developing and evaluating a strategy for matching funder metadata to Research Organization Registry (ROR) identifiers.
Preserving the integrity of the scholarly record is an important component of the overall endeavour to protect research integrity. Open scholarly infrastructure enables persistent recording of research objects and associated metadata, which provides an evidence trail for these objects for all in the research community. Crossref and DataCite – as providers of essential infrastructure for preservation of the scholarly record – we share our joint expertise in the new guide on “Why metadata matters for research integrity and how to contribute”.
As our global community continues to grow, it is important for us to build and maintain our connections within it. In March this year, we had the opportunity to visit SĂŁo Paulo for a community event at the Fundação GetĂşlio Vargas. The content of our presentations is available online. Events such as this provide an opportunity for us to update our members on Crossref fundamentals and developments, and help us better tune in to the varied needs of our communities and learn how we can work together more effectively. This was our third visit to Brazil, with previous events held in Campinas and SĂŁo Paulo in 2016, and Goiânia and Fortaleza in 2018.Â
Each organization in the global community of Crossref members (that’s currently over 24k organizations in 166 different countries) plays a key role in building the Research Nexus. Any opportunity we have to meet with our members in person is a highlight and a way for us to learn more from each other. The month of January saw three of us travel to Bangkok to attend the first-ever Charleston Conference organised in Asia and to meet with our growing community in Thailand.
Registering your DOI records using the OJS platform
In order to register DOI records with Crossref, you need to set up your OJS (Open Journal Systems) platform to create DOIs on your Crossref DOI prefix, and also set up your OJS platform to send your records to Crossref. You do this in a different way depending on whether you are using OJS 3.4 or OJS 3.3:
You can download the newest versions of OJS in the Public Knowledge Project’s (PKP) documentation.
Additional OJS plugins for Crossref
There are also other important plugins that can be enabled in OJS to enrich your metadata records:
Funding Metadata plugin - as of OJS 3.1.2, it is possible to enable a funder registry plugin for submitting funding information to Crossref. The plugin will use the Open Funder Registry to check against existing funding agencies. The plugin will include funding information in your Crossref DOI deposits.
Similarity Check plugin - if you are using OJS 3.1.2 or above, you are able to use the Similarity Check plugin. This will enable you to automatically send manuscripts to your iThenticate account to check their similarity to already published content. You will need to be subscribed to Crossref’s Similarity Check service for this to work.
ROR plugin - the ROR Plugin for OJS enables authors to add the ROR ID for the organization they are affiliated with.
Getting help with OJS plugins
The team at Crossref didn’t create these plugins - they were either created by the team at PKP, or by third-party developers. Because of this, we aren’t able to give in-depth help or troubleshooting on problems with these plugins.
