As we finish celebrating our 25th anniversary, we can look back on a truly transformational year, defined by the successful delivery of several long-planned, foundational projects—as well as updates to our teams, services, and fees—that position Crossref for success over the next quarter century as essential open scholarly infrastructure. In our update at the end of 2024, we highlighted that we had restructured our leadership team and paused some projects. The changes made in 2024 positioned us for a year of getting things done in 2025. We launched cross-functional programs, modernised our systems, strengthened connections with our growing global community, and streamlined a bunch of technical and business operations while continuing to grow our staff, members, content, relationships, and community connections.
Crossref turned twenty-five this year, and our 2025 Annual Meeting became more than a celebration—it was a shared moment to reflect on how far open scholarly infrastructure has come and where we, as a community, are heading next.
Over two days in October, hundreds of participants joined online and in local satellite meetings in Madrid, Nairobi, Medan, Bogotá, Washington D.C., and London––a reminder that our community spans the globe. The meetings offered updates, community highlights, and a look at what’s ahead for our shared metadata network––including plans to connect funders, platforms, and AI tools across the global research ecosystem.
In my latest conversations with research funders, I talked with Hannah Hope, Open Research Lead at Wellcome, and Melissa Harrison, Team Leader of Literature Services at Europe PMC. Wellcome and Europe PMC are working together to realise the potential of funding metadata and the Crossref Grant Linking System for, among other things, programmatic grantee reporting. In this blog, we explore how this partnership works and how the Crossref Grant Linking System is supporting Wellcome in realising their Open Science vision.
In January 2026, our new annual membership fee tier takes effect. The new tier is US$200 for member organisations that operate on publishing revenue or expenses (whichever is higher) of up to US$1,000 annually. We announced the Board’s decision, making it possible in July, and––as you can infer from Amanda’s latest blog––this is the first such change to the annual membership fee tiers in close to 20 years!
The new fee tier resulted from the consultation process and fees review undertaken as part of the Resourcing Crossref for Future Sustainability program, carried out with the help of our Membership and Fees Committee (made up of representatives from member organisations and community partners). The program is ongoing, and the new fee tier, intended to make Crossref membership more accessible, is one of the first changes it helped us determine.
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.ezproxy.galter.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.ezproxy.galter.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 - new Metadata Manager
The new Metadata Manager tool (previously known as 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 - 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-December-10
