Member Experience on Crossref

SSP roadtrip for the Crossref team

Amanda Bartell — Wed, 30 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

What do you think of when you think of Chicago? Deep dish pizza? Art Deco architecture?

Well for one week only this year you can add scholarly publishing to the list as the #SSP2018 Conference comes to town. Some Crossref people are excited to be heading out for the conference, and we’re looking forward to meeting as many of our members as possible.

Come along to stand 212A and talk to Anna Tolwinska about Participation Reports. Although this new tool is still in beta, she’s giving SSP attendees a sneak peek and the chance to get an early look at whether they (and over 10 000 other members) are registering the ten key elements that add context and richness to the basic required metadata. You’ll get real insight into what metadata you’re registering, even if this work is done by a third party or other department.

Thinking about registering preprints or including data citations? Want to find out more about our forthcoming Event Data service? Our product director Jennifer Lin will be able to give you the ins and outs of all our latest services so do keep an eye out for her at the conference.

Speaking of third parties, I’ll will be popping along to the “Thinking the Unthinkable, or How to Prepare for a Platform Migration” pre meeting seminar on Wednesday with copies of our new Platform Migration Checklist and lots of hints and tips to help form a new platform migration guide which will help members have a smooth transition when thinking of moving providers.

Shayn Smulyan will be attending the ORCID breakfast meeting on Thursday morning, so come and say hello if you have any questions about how ORCID and Crossref work together. Shayn is one of our support specialists, so he’ll be able to help you with any other technical queries you may have.

Our tech director Chuck Koscher will be keen to hone in on members’ advanced questions about Content Registration, citation matching, and any and all schema deets. So seek him out if you have deep technical questions.

Want to find out more about Metadata 2020, the new campaign to improve metadata for research? Rosa Morais Clark will be able to give you the lowdown, and even better - she has stickers!

And don’t feel left out if you aren’t a member but work closely with Crossref. Jennifer Kemp will be on hand to answer all your metadata use and reuse questions, she’ll be looking forward to chatting with all kinds of service providers, platforms, and tools.

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Are you having an identity crisis?

Amanda Bartell — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We work with a huge range of organisations in the scholarly communications world—publishers, libraries, universities, government agencies, funders, publishing service providers, and researcher services providers—and you each have different relationships with us.

Some of you are members who create and disseminate your own content, register it with us by depositing metadata, and help steer our future by voting in our annual board elections. Some of you don’t vote in our board elections but do play a vital role by registering content on members’ behalf.

And some of you make use of the metadata provided by our members and so perform a key service by getting their published works out into the world, but don’t vote in our board elections.

After a recent review we realized our Member Types weren’t completely clear, and may in fact have led to a bit of confusion. With this in mind, we put some thought into their revision and have now given them the clarity they were missing. Over the course of this year we’ll be checking that everyone is in the right group and getting the appropriate support based on your Member Type.

Former Member Type name	New Member Type name
Publisher	Member
Sponsoring Publisher	Sponsoring Member
Represented Member	Sponsored Member
Sponsoring Entity	Sponsoring organisation
Sponsored Member	Sponsored organisation
Affiliate	Metadata User
Service Provider	(No change to Member Type name)

So, what’s different?

The changes we’ve made help to differentiate if you’re a voting member (and therefore have a say in our future direction), or not. If you are a voting member, you’ll now have the word “Member” in your title—and if you’re not—you won’t, as the diagram below indicates.

Where there are two organisations with a sponsorship arrangement in place (with a sponsoring party and a sponsored party), one of you will always be the voting party, and the other will be non-voting. These partnerships will therefore always contain one “Member” and one “organisation”.

We’ve also stopped using the word “Publisher” in our Member Types as not all our members consider themselves to be publishers — sometimes you’re libraries, funders, scholars, repositories, etc. As it says in one of our truths “Come one, come all: we define publishing broadly. If you communicate research and care about preserving the scholarly record, join us.”

How do you know if you are a voting member?

Voting members fall into three Member Types: Members, Sponsoring Members and Sponsored Members.

This means you are organisations who create and disseminate content, and therefore contribute to the scholarly record. Some of you register your content directly with us and some via a third party, but the key thing is that you’re adding to our metadata records, and as such can have a say in the future direction of Crossref. Voting members can also take metadata out of our system — and many of you do — however, your key relationship with us is as a member who is contributing to the scholarly record.

It also means you have obligations to keep your records up-to-date, and maximize links with other Crossref members.

What’s the difference between the voting categories?

Members
As a Member (formerly known as Publishers), you create and disseminate content, register your own content with us (usually under a single prefix), and are able to vote in our board elections. You pay an annual fee based on your publishing revenue, plus Content Registration fees for all new DOIs.

Sponsoring Members
As a Sponsoring Member (formerly known as a Sponsoring Publisher), you do everything a standard member does, but as well as registering your own content under your own DOI prefix, you also register content on behalf of other, smaller publishers (ideally using separate DOI prefixes so the metadata is accurate and can be reported on separately and relied upon downstream).

When you vote, you vote on behalf of the organisations that you sponsor. You pay an annual fee based on your publishing revenue/expenses plus the publishing revenue of your sponsored organisations, and you also pay Content Registration fees for all new metadata records registered. You look after deposit billing for the organisations you sponsor, and provide technical and language support for them.

Some of our larger members may be thinking that you should be in this Member Type - and you’re probably right! During the course of 2018 we’ll be working with you to transition you over to Sponsoring Membership. If you are a Member who is thinking of becoming a Sponsoring Member, please get in touch.

Sponsored Members
As a Sponsored Member (formerly known as a Represented Member), you create and disseminate content, but you don’t register your content directly with us—this is done by your Sponsoring organisation. Because of this it’s you, the one who creates and disseminates the content and thus contributes to the scholarly record, who can vote.

How do you know if you are a non-voting member?

If you haven’t spotted yourself yet, you may be one of the non-voting organisations we work with — these fall into four Member Types: Sponsoring organisations, Sponsored organisations, Service Providers and Metadata Users.

As a non-voting organisation, you may still register content with us, but you either don’t create and disseminate the content yourselves, or you’re already represented by a voting organisation. Non-voting organisations also include those whose only relationship with us is to make use of our metadata.

What’s the difference between the non-voting categories?

Sponsoring organisations
As a Sponsoring organisation (formerly known as a Sponsoring Affiliate), you don’t create and disseminate content yourself, but you do register content with us on behalf of your Sponsored Members — preferably using distinct DOI prefixes for each member. You also often look after their administrative, technical, billing and language support needs. You’ll pay us an annual fee based on the publishing revenue of all your members, and Content Registration fees for all new DOIs. You might charge the members you work with for this service. You also provide support and promotion of our services and activities.

Sponsored organisations
As a Sponsored organisation (formerly known as a Sponsored Member), you do create and disseminate content yourself, but you don’t register your own content. This is done by a Sponsoring Member, and as they have the member vote, you can’t have one too. For this reason, we’ve removed the word “Member” from your title, to make your voting position clearer. Of course, your Sponsoring Member needs to represent your needs too when voting, so make sure you make them known!

Service Providers
As a Service Provider you work closely with our members to collect and/or host and/or deposit metadata on their behalf. Unlike a Sponsoring organisation however you don’t get involved with administrative, technical, billing or language support for the members you work with, but you’re a key partner in helping them deposit quality metadata and contribute effectively to the scholarly record. During 2018 we’ll be working more closely with you to help you collaborate with us more effectively.

Metadata Users
Metadata Users (formerly known as Affiliates), you are the organisations who don’t register content with us, but you do make use of it through our free and open APIs and search interfaces, or our paid-for Metadata Plus service, giving you access to a premium version of both the REST API and OAI-PMH. Of course all members can get metadata out of our systems as well, but if the only thing you do with us is get metadata out, then you’re a Metadata User.

Don’t know which Member Type you are?

We’re hoping these new names make it clearer, but if you’re still confused, please get in touch with our membership specialist

Dr. Livingstone, I presume…a two month expedition deep into the heart of research publishing

Amanda Bartell — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Hello there. I’m Amanda Bartell, and I joined the Crossref team in mid-October as the new Head of Member Experience. My new Member Experience team will be responsible for metadata users as well as members, onboarding new accounts, supporting existing ones, and making sure that everyone can make the most of Crossref services - an an easy and efficient way. I have spent the last couple of months exploring the world of academic publishing and what our members need - and it’s been fascinating!

Expedition members

The new Member Experience team is made up of some people who are new to Crossref and Scholarly Publishing and some whose names you’ll probably recognize!

Anna Tolwinska (Member Experience Manager) will support existing members in understanding the quality of metadata they deposit with us, and how they can best make use of our other products and services.
Paul Davis (Product Support Specialist) and Shayn Smulyan (Product Support Associate) will continue to provide excellent technical support to all creators and consumers of our metadata.
Gurjit Bhullar (Membership Coordinator) will help new applicants who want to join Crossref understand the member obligations and have a smooth induction journey.

We’ll be expanding the team in 2018 to support you further - watch this space!

What a diverse ecosystem

My background is educational publishing, so this has been my first foray into the world of scholarly publishing. In my first few months I’ve been lucky enough to attend three very different events with Crossref - Frankfurt Book Fair, our annual meeting (LIVE17) in Singapore, and an OpenCon event in Oxford. Each one has given me the chance to talk to our members and other constituents, and I’ve been really struck by what a diverse bunch you are: from small volunteer-led society journals through universities to commercial behemoths; from Albania to Zambia (and 125 countries in between); covering everything from Ancient History to X-Ray Spectrometry.

Expedition equipment to suit the climate

This diversity gives my team a huge responsibility. We need to make sure that the support we provide to you can meet the needs of everyone - whether you’re a multinational publisher with a large team of xml specialists, or a small team of enthusiastic academics. Everyone should be able to clearly understand and take advantage of what Crossref offers both to you as an organisation and to the wider scholarly community.

With this in mind, we’re going to be making a few changes to the support materials we provide over the next 12 months—rewriting them so they’re clearer for everyone, re-structuring our support center so there’s a separate route through depending on your level of technical expertise and closer links with our main website, plus providing support in different languages and different formats.

Sticking together in a harsh environment

As someone who has previously worked in commercial publishing, something else that has struck me about working in a member organisation is the difference between members and traditional “customers”. It’s been fantastic to see how involved many of you are in Crossref. From taking part in our various committees and working groups, to helping to organize LIVE Local events, to attending webinars and training, it’s obvious that you feel a real sense of ownership over Crossref and our shared mission.

We’re hoping to make use of that great sense of community in 2018 by improving our member center, giving you more access to see the level of metadata you’re sharing with the community (and that others are sharing) and providing more options for you to communicate with, and support each other. We’re also going to be improving the education we offer for new members, to make sure that everyone is aware of the joint mission we all have to improve research communications. Most long time members know it’s so much more than just having a DOI, and we need to make sure that our new members are aware of this too and share our vision.

Leaving no-one behind

We have a lot of plans for the Member Experience team in 2018, but it’s key that everything we do meets the needs of all our members. If you have any suggestions for how we can improve your member experience, [do let me know](mailto:feedback@crossref.org?subject=Member Experience suggestion).

And our survey says...

Christine Cormack Wood — Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year we sent out a short survey inviting members to rate our performance. We asked what you think we do well, what we don’t do so well, and one thing we could do to improve our rating.

We were delighted to receive 313 responses and relieved that 93% of those were positive (phew!). It was very useful to hear your thoughts and to get such a variety of comments covering Product, Outreach, Marketing and Member Experience. There were a few recurring themes, three of which we’d like to address here:

1. Providing information in different languages

Not surprisingly, given the growing diversity of our member base, some respondents asked us to share information in languages other than English. We have been aware of this growing need for some time and have been working on a few developments in this area:

In January 2018 we will be launching a series of seven service videos in six different languages—French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.
January also sees the launch of a new initiative called the Ambassador Program. Ambassadors will work closely with Crossref to help spread the word about our services, and support our global members in their own languages.
During 2017 we hosted two webinars in Brazilian Portuguese and one in Turkish, and aim to increase this in 2018.

2. Member-to-member discussion forum

Some respondents asked for a facility to enable members to reach out to each other, giving direct opportunity for discussions and/or sharing experiences online (and in their own languages). We have been working for a few months now to provide a member-to-member discussion area, which is planned for 2018. Following a soft launch covering a few areas/topics, we’ll broaden the scope to include technical support, too.

3. Registering metadata more easily using the web deposit form

Many respondents requested a more user-friendly process for registering metadata through our webform. Our Product and DevOps teams have been working on this for some time and have created a new interface called the Metadata Manager, which is currently in Beta but scheduled to launch in Q1 of 2018.

Finally, we’d like to thank you for participating in our survey. Your valuable feedback and suggestions help us understand your experience, improve our service, shape the course of particular projects and even direct our future strategy.

As this survey was anonymous, we are unable to respond to anyone on an individual basis, however, if you’d like to have your particular comments addressed, we would love to hear from you directly.

Working with universities at Crossref LIVE Yogyakarta

Rachael Lammey — Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Following on from our LIVE Annual Meeting in Singapore, my colleague, Susan Collins, and I held a local LIVE event in Yogyakarta thanks to support from Universitas Ahmad Dahlan (UAD), Universitas Muhammadiyah Sidoarjo and one of Crossref’s new Sponsoring Affiliates, Relawan Jurnal Indonesia.

Over the past two years, we’ve seen accelerated growth in our membership in Asia Pacific (making up a quarter of all new members in the last two years). A lot of those new members have come from Indonesia, so it was great to have the opportunity to meet up, answer questions and to share knowledge between all our different organisations.

We welcomed speakers such as Dr. Muhammad Dimyati, from the Directorate General of Strengthening for Research and Development, Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education. Dr. Dimyati talked about the importance of Indonesian research and presented statistics on its growth, but also its coverage in different databases like Scopus and DOAJ.

Dr. Lukman from LIPI, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences also joined us to explain the importance of identifiers within the research ecosystem. As any identifier buff will know, we’re keen to talk more about how organisations are using Crossref metadata and identifiers, and the importance of providing good, complete metadata (Metadata2020) so this, plus a remote presentation from Nobuko Miyari from ORCID helped provide great context for the day.

Metadata and identifiers are of course just one part of the process, and Mr. Tole Sutikno from UAD gave an overview of good practice publishing by looking at some of the wider issues that journal editors (and researchers) need to know.

We had time in the afternoon to talk to our audience about Crossref - our different services, OJS integrations, funding data and our APIs, and thanks to our moderators we were able to take lots of questions from members who had specific questions about Crossmark, Cited-by and depositing references.

A few weeks later, and I’m still absorbing all of the things that happened on our (too) quick trip to Yogyakarta.

Thanks again to our members and hosts for attending the event and sharing their questions, ideas and plans with us, and we plan to come back to continue to build on these in future.