Scholarly metadata, deposited by thousands of our members and made openly available can act as “trust signals” for the publications. It provides information that helps others in the community to verify and assess the integrity of the work. Despite having a central responsibility in ensuring the integrity of the work that they publish, editorial teams tend not be fully aware of the value of metadata for integrity of the scholarly record. How can we change that?
Crossref was created back in 2000 by 12 forward-thinking scholarly publishers from North America and Europe, and by 2002, these members had registered 4 million DOI records. At the time of writing, we have over 23,600 members in 164 different countries. Half of our members are based in Asia, and 35% are universities or scholar-led. These members have registered over 176 million open metadata records with DOIs (as of today). What a difference 25 years makes!
In our 25th anniversary year, I thought it would be time to take a look at how we got here. And so—hold tight—we’re going to go on an adventure through space and time1, stopping every 5 years through Crossref history to check in on our members. And we’re going to see some really interesting changes over the years.
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the largest book fair in the world, and therefore a key event on our calendar. Held annually in Frankfurt, Germany, the 77th Frankfurt Book Fair (October 15–19, 2025) saw 118,000 trade visitors and 120,000 private visitors from 131 countries. The Crossref booth was located, as usual, in Hall 4.0 where all the stands with information about academic publishing can be found. Four Crossref colleagues attended the Book Fair this year, and in this blog post, you can read more about their meetings, experiences, and plans.Â
TL;DR. Metadata Manager will be retired at the end of 2025. Over the past four years, we have been developing a new helper tool to replace it, and that tool has now reached a stage of maturity that means we will be able to switch off Metadata Manager by the end of the year.
The quickest way to test whether your DOI and its associated metadata have been registered successfully (and your DOI is now active) is to enter your DOI link (DOI displayed as a link, such as https://doi-org.turing.library.northwestern.edu/10.13003/5jchdy) into a browser window, and check if it resolves correctly. DOI 10.13003/5jchdy has been registered so it is resolving to that DOI’s landing page (or, resolution URL). DOIs that have not been registered will resolve to a DOI NOT FOUND error message on doi.org, such as https://doi-org.turing.library.northwestern.edu/10.13003/unregisteredDOI.
If your DOI doesn’t resolve successfully, read on for more information about the process your submission goes through, why there might be a delay, and which messages you’ll receive depending on your submission method.
If you register your content using the web deposit form, your submission is sent to a submission queue. You’ll see a “success” message in the web deposit form confirming that your submission has been successfully sent to our submission queue, but this doesn’t mean that your registration is complete.
As your submission is processed in the queue, we send you two messages:
XML record email, subject line: Crossref WebDeposit - XML. This email includes the XML created by the web deposit form. Do keep this information, as it may be useful in the future. Receiving this email is a confirmation that your file has been received for processing, and entered into our submission queue.
submission log email, subject line: Crossref Submission ID. This email is sent once your XML has made it through the queue, includes your submission ID, tells you if your deposit has been successful, and provides the reason for any failure.
If your submission log email tells you that your submission was successful, your DOI is now live and active (or your update to metadata for an existing DOI has worked).
If your submission failed, please address the errors flagged in the confirmation, and resubmit. Learn more about error messages.
If you don’t receive your submission log email immediately, it’s probably because your submission is still in the queue. It can stay in the queue between several minutes and several hours depending on how large your submission file is, and how busy our submission queue is at that time. Learn more about how to view the submission queue.
If you don’t receive your submission log email and you can’t see your submission in the queue, it may be that your access to register content has been suspended due to unpaid invoices. If this is the case, please contact us.
Verify your registration - record registration form
The record registration form registers your record in real time, with no queueing or delay. If your submission has been successful, you’ll see a “success” message, which means your DOI is now live and active or your update to an existing record has worked.
Your “success” message will also contain a submission ID. If you need to, you can log into our admin tool using your account credentials and use this submission to view your deposit.
If your submission hasn’t been successful, you’ll see an error message explaining the problem.
Verify your registration - if you’re still using the deprecated Metadata Manager
The Metadata Manager tool is in beta and contains many bugs. It has been deprecated since 2021 and will be sunset at the end of 2025. We recommend using an alternative such as the record registration form, the web deposit form, or the OJS plugin if your content is hosted on the OJS platform from PKP.
If you’re still using Metadata Manager, here’s how to verify your registration.
Unlike other content registration methods, Metadata Manager registers content in real-time - with no queueing of content. If your submission has been successful, you’ll see a “success” message, which means that your DOI is now live and active (or your update to metadata for an existing DOI has worked).
Your “success” message will also contain a submission ID. If you need to, you can log in to our admin tool using your account credentials and use this submission ID to view your deposit.
If your submission hasn’t been successful, you’ll see a warning symbol - click on this to see the error message explaining the problem.
Verify your registration - direct deposit of XML using our admin tool
Submissions using our admin tool are sent to a submission queue. Once your submission has been accepted into the queue we display a SUCCESS - Your batch submission was successfully received message. This means that your deposit has been submitted to our processing queue, but it has not yet been processed.
Registration of your content only occurs after your submission has worked its way through the queue, when you will receive an email with the subject line Crossref Submission ID, which includes your submission ID, tells you if your deposit has been successful, and provides the reason for any failure.
If your deposit has been successful, then your new DOI is live and active (or your update to metadata for an existing DOI has worked).
If your submission failed, please address the errors flagged in the email, and resubmit. Not sure what the error messages mean and what you need to do? Learn more about error messages.
If you don’t receive your submission log email immediately, it’s probably because your submission is still in the queue. It can stay in the queue between several minutes and several hours depending on how large your submission file is, and how busy our submission queue is at that time. Learn more about how to view the submission queue.
If you don’t receive your submission log email and you can’t see your submission in the queue, it may be that your access to register content has been suspended due to unpaid invoices. If this is the case, please contact us.
Verify your registration - XML deposit using HTTPS POST
Most items registered with us are submitted via HTTPS POST. When files are POSTed to our system, you’ll receive a 200 status message to confirm that we’ve received it. Your files are then added to a submission queue to await processing, and once your submission has been processed, you’ll receive a submission log (either by email or through the notification callback service if you have that enabled).
If your submission log shows a success, then your DOI is live and active (or your update to metadata for an existing DOI has worked).
If your submission log shows a failure, please address the errors flagged in the email, and resubmit. Not sure what the error messages mean and what you need to do? Learn more about error messages.
There may be a delay between your submission being received by the queue and completing processing. It can stay in the queue between several minutes and several hours depending on how large your submission file is, and how busy our submission queue is at that time. Learn more about how to view the submission queue.
Verify your registration - Crossref XML plugin for OJS
If you are using the Crossref XML plugin for OJS to send your submission to us directly, check the status of your deposit by clicking the Articles tab at the top of the plugin settings page.
Page maintainer: Isaac Farley Last updated: 2025-March-02
