We have some rather unusual news to share: Crossref fees are going down again. At its meeting in Paris earlier this month, the Crossref Board approved two further recommendations from the Resourcing Crossref for Future Sustainability (RCFS) project: effective 1st January 2027, we will reduce the majority of Content Registration fees for all 25,000 members, and remove fees for back-year records altogether.
Content Registration fees haven’t increased in around 20 years, and this is the first significant change to them in that time—downwards. Since these fees account for the largest share of Crossref’s revenue (around 60%), and since every member registers DOI records, these changes reach further than anything we’ve announced under the RCFS project so far.
The infrastructure that registers and distributes Crossref metadata has been running and growing for more than two decades. It now does considerably more than it was built to do, and it shows: two large, tightly coupled monoliths (Content System and REST API), where a change in one place risks breaking something in another.
In December 2026, we plan to publish new Crossref Member Practices which will set out the standards we expect all Crossref members to meet. From August to October 2026 we are consulting with our members on a draft of these Member Practices. This blog provides the background to this, and explains how you can share your views.
The Crossref community in India is as diverse as the region that it represents, comprising 1605 members, 11 sponsoring organisations, and 5 ambassadors, who between them cover the length and breadth of this country. Between November 2025 and March 2026, we organised three webinars focused on supporting this community with best metadata and publishing practices. We collaborated with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to embed understanding of metadata’s role in the greater context of publishing integrity.
Reference linking enables researchers to follow a link from the reference list to other full-text documents, helping them to make connections and discover new things.
Reference Linking means including Crossref DOIs (displayed as URLs) in the reference lists that you provide in your own published work. This enables researchers to follow a link from a reference list to the current landing page for that referenced work. And because it’s a DOI rather than just a link, it will remain persistent.
So, instead of just including the reference in your reference list…
Soleimani N, Mohabati Mobarez A, Farhangi B. Cloning, expression and purification flagellar sheath adhesion of Helicobacter pylori in Escherichia coli host as a vaccination target. Clin Exp Vaccine Res. 2016 Jan;5(1):19-25.
…you should also display the DOI link:
Soleimani N, Mohabati Mobarez A, Farhangi B. Cloning, expression and purification flagellar sheath adhesion of Helicobacter pylori in Escherichia coli host as a vaccination target. Clin Exp Vaccine Res. 2016 Jan;5(1):19-25. https://doi-org.ezproxy.galter.northwestern.edu/10.7774/cevr.2016.5.1.19
Because Crossref is all about rallying the scholarly community to work together, reference linking is an obligation for all Crossref members. But you don’t have to be a Crossref member to link your references - we provide free tools that anyone can use to match their reference lists to existing DOIs so they can link their references.
Watch the introductory reference linking animation in your language:
Persistent links enhance scholarly communications. Reference linking offers important benefits:
Reciprocity: members’ records are linked together and more discoverable because all members link their references.
As a member organisation, we can obligate all our members to link their references, so that individual members can avoid the inconvenience of signing bilateral agreements to link to persistent resources on other platforms. The result is a scholarly communications infrastructure that enables the exchange of ideas and knowledge.
Discoverability: research travels further when everyone links their references. Because DOIs don’t break if implemented correctly, they will always lead readers to the resource they’re looking for, including yours. When the DOIs are displayed, anyone can copy and share them. This will also enable better tracking of where and when people are talking about and sharing scholarly objects, including in social media.
Obligations and fees for reference linking
Reference Linking is an obligation of membership for all Crossref members. But anyone can use our support tools for Reference Linking - you don’t have to be a member. And there’s no charge to use our support tools for Reference Linking.
Getting started with reference linking
There are various different ways to look up other member’s DOIs to add to your reference lists. Read more here.
