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.
Not sure if you’re using iThenticate v1 or iThenticate 2.0? More here.
Not sure whether you’re an account administrator? Find out here.
The Submitted Works repository (or Private Repository) is a new feature in iThenticate 2.0, which is now available to Crossref members. This feature allows users to find similarity not just across Turnitin’s extensive Content Database but also across all previous manuscripts submitted to your iThenticate account for all the journals you work on. This would allow you to find collusion between authors or potential cases of duplicate submissions.
How does this work?
You have received a manuscript from Author 1 and have decided to index this manuscript into your Submitted Works repository. At some point later you receive a new manuscript from Author 2. When generating your Similarity Report, you have decided to check against your Submitted Works repository. There is a paragraph in the manuscript from Author 2 which matches a paragraph in the manuscript from Author 1. This would be highlighted within your Similarity Report as a match against your Submitted Works repository.
By clicking on this match you can see the full text of the submission you’ve matched against:
And details about the submission, such as the name and email address of the user who submitted it, the date it was submitted and the title of the submission:
The ability to see the full source text and the details can both be switched off individually.
As with all matches, they can be excluded from the Sources Overview panel or you can turn off matches against all Submitted Works from the settings:
