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.
To work out which version you’re on, take a look at the website address that you use to access iThenticate. If you go to ithenticate.com then you are using v1. If you use a bespoke URL, https://crossref-[your member ID].turnitin.com/ then you are using iThenticate 2.0.
Manage your user account using the Account Information tab.
Your user account profile (v1)
The Account Information section shows important information about your iThenticate account, including your account name, account ID, and user ID. Please ignore the iThenticate account expiry date - we’re working with iThenticate to have this removed. The iThenticate account expiry date is set to 1 June 2022 by default.
From Account Info, then My Profile, you can:
Update your profile: this form shows your current details. To make changes, enter your password in the Current Password field at the top of the form.
Change the name attributed to your account: enter the first and last name in the relevant fields. These fields are required, you cannot leave them blank.
Change your email address: enter your email into the email field. This email address is used to send you important account information, so please make sure it is valid. This field is required, you cannot leave it blank.
Add a photo to your account: click Choose File, and select the image file you want to upload.
Change your password: enter your current password in the Current Password field, enter your new password in the Change Password field, and enter it again in the Confirm Password field.
Click Update Profile to save your changes.
Page maintainer: Kathleen Luschek Last updated: 2020-May-19
