Funding is one of the key enablers of the research lifecycle, but has been one of the hardest parts of the scholarly record to identify, describe and connect. This is slowly changing as we have recently reached a very exciting milestone for Crossref’s Grant Linking System (GLS). What makes it remarkable is not only the numbers reached, but where the data comes from. Research funders, who joined Crossref as members, have actively contributed more than 200,000 grants to the Research Nexus (Figure 1).
We are pleased to announce the re-launch of the Crossref Service Providers Program. From today, we are accepting applications from organisations providing tools for metadata registration to Crossref members. Participation in this program is free and the application involves an accreditation process to determine eligibility and the appropriate participation tier.
As a membership organisation, Crossref supports its members to provide rich and complete metadata which facilitates integrity judgements, increases discoverability, linking among scholarly objects and activities, and improves transparency. Service providers are key collaborators in this work because they enable our members to adopt better metadata practices.
Three years ago, we asked our members what they needed from Crossref’s metadata. We received confirmation that we were going in the right direction, as well as some new ideas to explore. This helped set the course for our metadata development work since then, and continues to guide where we’re headed next.
For many years, PubPub has made it possible for communities to assign DOIs to a range of outputs and component Pubs. Knowledge Futures and Crossref are building together to test the limits of what’s possible for high-volume, high-granularity DOI management. That means fast prototypes, real building, and learning through the process.
The new Metadata Manager tool (previously known as the record registration form) can be used to deposit metadata for your records. You do not need any knowledge of XML to use it. The tool currently supports registration of journal articles, reports, dissertations, grants, and post-publication updates (such as retraction notices) for journal content. We are planning to add support for additional record types in future.
Select the type of record you wish to create, then enter the metadata associated with your record in the corresponding fields. Some fields are required to be filled out in order to submit your record, while others are optional. You can find links to our documentation in the form for more information on what each field means.
Journal article and post-publication update metadata also includes some information on the journal and, optionally, the issue and/or volume that the article was published in. To help avoid common errors with journal titles, you can auto-fill the journal metadata by choosing from a list of titles you have previously deposited into. You can search the list by title or by ISSN. Note that an ISSN is currently required to use the new Metadata Manager for registering journal content.
Submit your record
After filling out the required fields as well as any optional metadata you want to deposit, check that everything looks correct and then click Submit at the bottom of the form. The submission will be made immediately and a success message will appear on the screen.
From the success page, you can click through to more information about your submission in our Admin tool, or start another submission right away. If you have registered a journal article, you can choose to repeat the process for another article in the same journal and/or journal issue, which will pre-fill the form with the appropriate metadata so you don’t have to re-enter it.
If there is a problem with your submission, you will see an error message appear instead of the success page. Go to the documentation for tips on how to troubleshoot common errors from our deposit system.
Edit an existing record
Metadata can change over time, and Metadata Manager allows you to update your records to reflect this.
Choose Edit Record from the landing page or the sidebar navigation to see a list of the journal article and grant records you have previously registered using this tool, the web deposit form, or the deprecated legacy Metadata Manager.
You can search for any DOI, scroll through the list of previously registered records, or filter it by the date when the record was last updated. Find the record you are looking for and click Edit to access a form page with the record’s current metadata filled in. Simply make any changes and submit the record again to register the updated metadata. Note that post-publication update metadata can not currently be updated using this tool for technical reasons.
Page maintainer: Lena Stoll Last updated: 2026-June-18
