Metadata Awards on Crossref

Celebrating Noyam Journals’ Metadata Award

Johanssen Obanda — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Noyam Journals, based in Accra, Ghana, was recently recognised for the completeness of its metadata through the Crossref Metadata Award, part of our 25th anniversary celebrations. Noyam was one of six publishers worldwide to receive the award and stood out as a leader among members of our Global Equitable Membership (GEM) Program.

The GEM Program supports publishers and organisations in low- and middle-income countries to participate in the global scholarly community by reducing barriers to membership and services.

Earlier this year, at our Crossref Accra event, representatives from Noyam spoke about how registering metadata with Crossref has expanded their readership worldwide. They also encouraged other publishers and institutions in Africa to utilise Crossref’s infrastructure to enhance the visibility and impact of their work.

Following their award, we spoke with Naa Kai Amanor-Mfoafo from Noyam Journals about their approach to metadata quality. She shares her reflections in the Q&A below.

What motivates your team to work towards high-quality metadata?

Our commitment towards high-quality metadata stems from our organisational goal to promote the dissemination of usable knowledge by publishing innovative and high-quality research content. Over the last five years, registering our metadata with Crossref has strengtheed authors’ trust as their institutions can verify quality through tools like Crossmark. For instance, many institutions use the Crossmark feature on our published articles to access the latest information about a scholarly article, including updates, corrections, or retractions.

Do you have a strategy for complete metadata?

We prioritise inclusion of ORCID IDs, Abstracts, and References as these increase visibility of our articles. We also include Affiliations, Licenses, and Crossmark, and we use Similarity Check to help ensure research integrity.

As part of our team structure, we have a dedicated staff member responsible for ensuring that every article is assigned a Crossref DOI on the same day it is published online. Our in-house system supports this process, allowing us to capture and register all the key metadata efficiently.

What impact of good metadata can you see on your organisation?

Good metadata has made a real difference for our organisation. It has helped increase the visibility and discoverability of our journal articles, making it easier for researchers and readers around the world to find and cite our work. We’ve noticed more engagement with our publications since improving our metadata, which encourages us to keep strengthening the quality of the information we register.

Have you encountered any challenges in curating or improving your metadata, and how did you address those?

One major challenge we’ve faced is discovering errors in previously uploaded metadata, and we haven’t yet established a systematic process for correcting them. We’re currently working to improve our workflow to help ensure the correctness of our metadata to follow Crossref’s recommended best practices.

Have your efforts around metadata led to real benefits for your community?

Our authors appreciate the fact that their ORCID profiles are automatically updated with their published articles once they are assigned DOIs from Crossref. They are, of course, also enjoying increased visibility of our published articles globally.

Looking ahead, how are you planning to build on your metadata quality?

We need to stay informed about developments at Crossref. Once in a while, we visit the Crossref website or participate in a webinar to stay informed. For example, a few months ago, we got to know that a new record registration form had been initiated for metadata uploads through the documentation section on the Crossref website.

We advise others who are new to Crossref to focus on consistency. Ensure your organisational system includes staff dedicated to keeping your metadata up to date. Secondly, feel free to seek technical support from the Crossref team when the need arises.

Raising the standard: GigaScience Press on metadata and discoverability

Scott Edmunds — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

To mark Crossref’s 25th anniversary, we launched our first Metadata Awards to highlight members with the best metadata practices. GigaScience Press, based in Hong Kong, was the leader among small publishers, defined as organisations with less than USD 1 million in publishing revenue or expenses. We spoke with Scott Edmunds, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief at GigaScience Press, about how discoverability drives their high metadata standards.

What motivates your organisation/team to work towards high-quality metadata? What objectives does it support for your organisation?

Our objective is to communicate science openly and collaboratively, without barriers, to solve problems in a data- and evidence-driven manner through Open Science publishing. High-quality metadata helps us address these objectives by improving the discoverability, transparency, and provenance of the work we publish. It is an integral part of the FAIR principles and UNESCO Open Science Recommendation, playing a role in increasing the accessibility of research for both humans and machines. As one of the authors of the FAIR principles paper and an advisor of the Make Data Count project, I’ve also personally been very conscious to practice what I preach.

Do you have a strategy for complete metadata? Which elements did you prioritise? What workflows, tools, or collaborations helped you get there?

We’ve been privileged to work with our technical partners at River Valley Technologies, and the novel XML-first publishing platform they have developed has made it particularly easy to integrate and collect persistent identifiers and other metadata, embedding it into the resulting rich-XML. As Open Access advocates, licensing and machine readability were early focuses when launching our journals. We ensured that we provided a text and data mining portal, allowing bulk downloads of our content to encourage reuse. Many specific metadata elements highlighted by the FAIR principles and UNESCO Open Science recommendations, and so these have also helped guide what should be prioritised. If there’s one specific tool to mention, we’ve been big fans of the Crossref participation reports, as this has helped highlight what is missing and what we need to improve upon.

How have you integrated these into your metadata processes?

The participation reports, in particular, have been useful for this, and by regularly checking them, we’ve managed to spot when processes have broken, for example. When you’ve added new fields to the reports like ROR IDs (Research Organization Registry), this has also motivated us to prioritise integrating these, so having a curated list of metadata fields like this definitively helps users focus on what should be the most important. River Valley Technologies has been very responsive to this type of feedback, and being able to see the participation report data in real-time has helped drive them to fix and update our metadata. So I thank them for being so patient and quick to respond to our very demanding standards.

What impact of good metadata can you see for your organisation?

From an Editorial side, our technical partners at River Valley Technologies have found having this metadata information available very useful in the Research Integrity tools they have developed and integrated into our publication platform. Things like ORCID IDs, RORs, and other identifiers are very useful for tracking provenance and increasing trust.

From a business side, putting the effort into collecting rich metadata has paid off in the long run by making it easier to integrate our publishing data into new platforms. Making it easier and quicker to integrate and track our data via OA Switchboard, for example. It also helps us more easily mirror and list our content in indexes like PMC, Scopus, Web of Science, and others.

Have you encountered any challenges in curating or improving your metadata?

One of the main metadata areas that has currently let us down, funding and registries, is because our publishing model is so affordable. The automated production processes from RVT’s novel publishing platform have allowed us to publish very cost-effectively (the APC of GigaByte is $535). We’ve also received sponsorship from the WHO to publish a series of public health papers, particularly supporting authors from the Global South who may not have sources of funding listed in these registries. Because of this, we’ve published numerous papers from independent researchers, students, and self-financed projects that may not have funding IDs or grant numbers. We’d like to push to get “unfunded” counted as a metadata field to address this.

Have your efforts regarding metadata yielded tangible benefits for your community? Is this something your editors, authors, or readers are aware of and appreciate? If so, why?

We’d like to think our authors find this useful, but we’ve not had any specific feedback on this. Our readers, both human and machine, should hopefully appreciate finding our work more easily, and from a purely selfish perspective, should get us higher access and citations. This is difficult to measure, but as evidence nerds, we have attempted to conduct RCTs examining this for Data Citations. One anecdote I can give is about the author who told us they pasted their paper into ChatGPT and asked it which was the best journal for their work, and it suggested our journal. I’d like to think that putting in this effort in making our papers more machine-readable and comprehensible pays off at times like this to make the discoverability and visibility of our journals greater.

Looking ahead, how are you planning to build on your metadata quality? Are there new elements or practices you’re exploring? And what advice would you give to others just starting to strengthen their metadata?

We still need to update older content with RORs, and improve it for the datasets linked to our papers. To do this, we’ve had interns working to improve our DataCite metadata.

We encourage others to think about metadata issues when setting up their workflows. While it may seem like additional work, it will be increasingly important to future-proof and get journals ready for our increasingly AI-centric age. And as we show here, we can more easily carry out important tasks like getting your content more quickly and widely indexed and disseminated.

Strong metadata ties open science, integrity, and discoverability together. GigaScience Press shows how consistent identifiers, machine-readable formats, and continuous checks deliver real benefits. As discovery becomes more AI-assisted, the priority is clear: keep metadata complete, open, and usable.

While it may seem like additional work, it will be increasingly important to future-proof and get journals ready for our increasingly AI-centric age.

– Scott Edmunds, GigaScience

Now, a few words from Scott.

Metadata Awards video - Gigascience

An eLife filled with possibility thanks to great metadata

Frederick Atherden — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

eLife recently won a Crossref Metadata Award for the completeness of its metadata, showing itself as the clear leader among our medium-sized members. In this post, the eLife team answers our questions about how and why they produce such high-quality open metadata. For eLife, the work of creating and sharing excellent metadata aligns with their mission to foster open science and supports their preprint-centred publication model, but it also lays the groundwork for all kinds of exciting potential uses.

Having complete and rich metadata puts you in the best position to fulfil future, as-yet-undetermined requirements.

– Fred Atherden, eLife

What motivates your organisation/team to work towards high-quality metadata? What objectives does it support for your organisation?

eLife is a mission-driven organisation tasked by its founders to help scientists accelerate discovery and encourage responsible behaviours in science. As such, we’re passionate about open science and metadata, and we’re vocal advocates of the benefits these provide to academic communities and beyond.

Given Crossref’s position as a hub at the centre of scholarly communication, providing Crossref with complete metadata furthers our mission. It facilitates the discovery and reuse of research and enables linkage to key but often overlooked outputs such as datasets and software. As signatories of DORA and supporters of the Barcelona Declaration, we are keenly aware of the wider context - that these efforts enable research assessment and policy decisions to be derived from open and transparent information, moving beyond closed systems that have proliferated the damaging use of anachronistic metrics.

Do you have a strategy for complete metadata? Which elements did you prioritise? What workflows, tools, or collaborations helped you get there?

There are plenty of existing guidelines that provide a great skeleton to follow. For example, we follow FAIR data and FORCE11 software citation principles, which ensure the capture of metadata for supporting datasets and software packages. There’s not any one particular element that we’ve prioritised, although we’re keen to ensure we follow best practices while also exploring the bleeding edge.

We’ve collaborated with and relied on the advice of many organisations over the years, including (but not limited to) Crossref, Research Organization Registry (ROR), JATS4R, FORCE11, Software Heritage, openRxiv, and our production vendors Exeter Premedia.

We’ve developed our own open source Crossref metadata generation library. Keeping this process in-house has proven really fruitful. It allows us to quickly and continuously improve upon the metadata we provide.

And we have a data team that has created a centralised data hub, serving as a really useful authoritative resource that can be queried, instead of always making use of disparate systems.

How have you integrated these into your metadata processes?

At submission, we collect ROR IDs for (a subset of) affiliations, and structured data for funding, datasets, and other information. Our publication model is centred around preprints, so it’s necessary to capture related information such as the preprint DOI, preprint posted date, the version that pertains to each specific revision (and so on). Without this information, we could not post public reviews to the correct preprint version on the preprint server, or indeed ensure the article we publish is the correct iteration of that work.

The systems that enable the publication of eLife Reviewed preprints are dependent on DocMaps, a framework for a machine-readable representation of the processes involved in the creation of a document. These are provided by our Data Hub and enable us to capture structured information about the peer review process and accompanying metadata for each article.

Our proofing system for journal articles only permits login via ORCID authentication, and we don’t capture unauthenticated ORCID IDs that have been copied or keyed (see ‘What’s So Special About Signing In?’). It also makes use of both the Crossref API and the PubMed Central API to ensure we have persistent identifiers where possible for references. We have an in-house content validator, which uses ROR’s API to ensure we have ROR IDs for affiliations and funders where possible. We use Software Heritage to archive author-generated code, and include their persistent ID (SWHID) in software references.

All our published content is captured as JATS XML (the industry standard format for journal articles), which our metadata generation library uses as its input.

What impact of good metadata can you see for your organisation? Is it supporting the business and/or editorial side of your work?

Persistent identifiers are very useful for reporting. Creating a report that, for example, includes publication volumes from a particular institution is trivial when content is enriched with persistent identifiers. It’s more complex when all you have are messy author-supplied strings of text. They’re also useful for content validation. For example, when we have a persistent ID and a method to retrieve the related metadata, we can confirm that the information we’ve been provided is complete and correct.

There are, of course, many other benefits, some of which are “unknown unknowns.” Having complete and rich metadata puts you in the best position to fulfil future, as-yet-undetermined requirements.

Have you encountered any challenges in curating or improving your metadata? If so, what were they, and how did you address those?

In 2024, we started introducing persistent grant IDs for our content. While we updated our submission system to collect these from authors, it’s apparent that many authors aren’t aware when/if these have been registered by funders, and they still provide us with the (internal) grant numbers instead.

Our workaround was to pull grant data from Crossref and then replace the grant numbers with the persistent IDs when we’re confident of a match. Since the grant number registered at Crossref might not exactly match the grant number the authors have given us, potential matches are confirmed by a team member or our production vendors. Since many organisations do a great job of creating informative landing pages (for example, EuropePMC for Wellcome funding), this is feasible, but we’re investigating ways we can make this less manual while remaining careful that we don’t introduce false positives.

Have your efforts around metadata led to real benefits for your community? Is this something your editors, authors, or readers are aware of and appreciate? If so, why?

Yes, I think this is something that is becoming increasingly visible. Authors are very mindful of the benefits that good metadata can bring for discoverability and promotion. And much is lost without the increased interoperability it brings, both for publishers themselves but also the wider ecosystem. For example, we’ve had some great feedback from numerous organisations that appreciate that the outputs we publish directly link to the preprints they are based on.

In recent years, there’s been an increased focus on research integrity, and this is likely to remain the case. Metadata has an obvious and key role in providing trust and transparency, whether that’s through the presence of trust markers like ORCID IDs or through the inclusion of complete post-publication metadata such as correction, retraction, or withdrawal information.

Looking ahead, how are you planning to build on your metadata quality? Are there new elements or practices you’re exploring? And what advice would you give to others just starting to strengthen their metadata?

Several years ago, we introduced a “publish, review, curate” model of publishing, where we publish ‘Reviewed preprints’ following each stage of review. We don’t collect the same level of structured information from authors at submission for these as we do for Versions of Record. This presents a challenge for retrieving and disseminating complete metadata for Reviewed preprints. We aim to start moving this forward so that comprehensive metadata is available at earlier stages of the publication process. For example, we recently started depositing (some) funding metadata for these.

We’re also keen to explore the ways in which we can make our eLife Assessments more discoverable. Our Editors use a common vocabulary to describe the significance of the findings and strength of evidence in a paper. Other publishers moving beyond accept/reject publication models use different rubrics and taxonomies, so having one restrictive field in a schema for the entire corpus of research won’t cut it. But nevertheless making these terms more discoverable and interoperable would be preferential.

We’ve found that the integration of public APIs/data within systems (such as ROR’s, Crossref’s, PubMed’s, and OpenAlex’s) to be really helpful in validating the correctness and completeness of content/metadata. The effort in adding these integrations will pay dividends in the future.

Time to enjoy Fred’s acceptance video.

Metadata Awards video - eLife

Mejorando la visibilidad a través de los metadatos: una mirada desde Editorial CSIC

Nacho Pérez Alcalde — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Click here for the version in English

Hablamos con Nacho Pérez Alcalde, Vicedirector Técnico de Editorial CSIC, la editorial al mando de ´Boletín Geológico y Minero’, ganadora del Crossref Metadata Award en la categoría de Metadata Enrichment. Miembro de Crossref desde 2008, Editorial CSIC publica 41 revistas en acceso abierto Diamante, y juega un papel esencial en la diseminación del conocimiento científico a nivel internacional. Exploramos lo que este premio ha significado para Editorial CSIC y qué planes para el futuro tienen para seguir mejorando la calidad y uso de sus metadatos.

El ‘Boletín Geológico y Minero’ ha recibido el primer premio de Crossref al enriquecimiento de vuestros metadatos ya que en tan solo dos años, ha visto la cobertura de los metadatos pasar del 1 al 40%. ¿Cuáles han sido las motivaciones que han llevado a esta revista a ver una mejora tan grande en sus metadatos?

Editorial CSIC publica 41 revistas científicas, todas ellas presentes en los principales indexadores. Son revistas de prestigio que ofrecen, desde hace muchos años, contenidos revisados de alta calidad. Sin embargo, hoy en día, no es ya suficiente para una revista científica ofrecer contenidos de calidad, hoy en día es necesario ofrecer también una alta calidad en los metadatos generados por esas publicaciones. Algo que hace no muchos años veíamos como un servicio de valor añadido se ha convertido en algo imprescindible.

En un entorno de trabajo electrónico y en Internet, los metadatos son claves para la difusión de los contenidos, la identificación de revistas, autores/as, instituciones editoras, entidades financiadoras… Para un editor es fundamental poder transmitir esa información según unos procedimientos técnicos y unos protocolos estandarizados para garantizar su compatibilidad con las máquinas que cosechan, almacenan y distribuyen datos favoreciendo la visibilidad y la descubribilidad de nuestras revistas.

¿Seguis alguna estrategia? ¿Cómo decidís qué elementos priorizar?

Llevamos años trabajando con metadatos y, de forma periódica, vamos revisando y ampliando el número de elementos que convertimos en metadatos. Damos prioridad siempre a lo que es ya un estándar claramente identificado (por ejemplo el ORCID) y también a aquellos metadatos alineados con las políticas editoriales que consideramos prioritarias (por ejemplo la licencia CC by que aplicamos).

El flujo de trabajo requiere como primer paso la identificación, por parte del editor, de los datos que se quieren obtener y de cómo se van a pedir. Una vez se integran todos ellos en la política de envío de originales a la revista, es imprescindible la colaboración de los autores que son los que aportan los datos que, en una fase posterior son revisados por un editor técnico especializado en metadatos (diferente al revisor de texto). Por último, es imprescindible contar con una herramienta que permita automatizar la transferencia de metadatos y aquí es muy importante contar con personal técnico especializado. Nosotros trabajamos con la plataforma OJS, yo he pasado años depositando metadatos en Crossref con los archivos XML que generábamos, uno a uno. Con 1.000 artículos publicados de media al año, la creación del Módulo de exportación CrossRef XML de OJS para el depósito automatizado desde la plataforma fue de gran ayuda para nosotros porque aligera bastante el trabajo, asegura una mayor fiabilidad y nos permite dedicar nuestro tiempo a mejorar otras cosas.

También nos da una mayor flexibilidad a la hora de revisar nuestras políticas de datos, por ejemplo, nos ha permitido abordar un depósito masivo para actualizar todas nuestras referencias para corregir errores recurrentes.

¿Cómo habéis integrado esto en vuestra estrategia de metadatos?

El Crossref Metadata Enrichment Award ha sido concedido en concreto a la revista Boletín Geológico y Minero por haber experimentado una gran mejora en sus metadatos en los últimos años. Esta revista era editada por otra institución y cuando Editorial CSIC se hizo cargo de ella le aplicamos los mismos estándares que venimos utilizando en el resto de nuestras revistas desde hace años. Nos sentimos por ello especialmente orgullosos, porque entendemos este premio como el aval a una política de metadatos que llevamos años desarrollando y que ha permitido una mejora importante para esta revista en un tiempo relativamente corto.

Para ello fue clave la colaboración de la dirección científica de la revista, nosotros explicamos primero qué datos deben ser solicitados a los autores, por qué y para qué, y luego nos ocupamos de confirmar que se han ido integrando en los artículos y de implementarlos en la plataforma OJS para proceder después a su depósito en Crossref pero también a su integración en otras vías de difusión de metadatos.

A nivel de impacto, ¿cómo veis que una buena cobertura de los metadatos afecta a vuestra organización? ¿Beneficia de alguna manera vuestro trabajo editorial? O cualquier otro aspecto de vuestra actividad?

Más allá de sus beneficios obvios como potenciar la visibilidad de nuestras publicaciones y contribuir a manejar una información controlada y de calidad, en última instancia deberían ayudarnos a posicionarnos como grupo profesional. Nuestra función esencial es publicar contenido científico revisado y de calidad y transmitirlo a la comunidad científica y, cada vez más, a toda la sociedad. Sin embargo, hoy en día, deberíamos aspirar a ser identificados también como proveedores de datos. Y eso, en “la era del dato”, es mucho decir. Debemos ser capaces de extraer los metadatos de nuestras publicaciones aportados por los autores (palabras claves, filiación, bibliografías…) pero también debemos ser capaces de generar nosotros otros metadatos y de transmitirlos y difundirlos.

Las revistas científicas deben seguir contando con un editor que haga una revisión ortotipografía y de pruebas, pero también deben contar con un editor de metadatos, alguien que sepa qué es FundRef y sepa dónde y cómo hay que introducir los datos en la plataforma para garantizar que se conservan y transfieren de manera correcta y eficiente.

Por ello, quiero aprovechar esta ocasión para reivindicar el papel del editor como generador y proveedor de datos. Los editores somos la fuente de datos, hay agentes como las bibliotecas e indexadores que los cosechan, archivan, transmiten y procesan para, por ejemplo, generar nuevos contenidos o servicios, pero solo nosotros tenemos la capacidad de generarlos.

¿Habéis encontrado dificultades a la hora de mejorar y manejar vuestros metadatos? En ocasiones los autores se quejan de que se les piden muchos datos, por ejemplo, el uso de ORCID es obligatorio en nuestras publicaciones y muchos autores, sobre todo de ámbitos no europeos, se han quejado porque no saben qué es y para qué sirve o, por motivos personales, no quieren registrar ese identificador personal. Son motivos respetables, por supuesto, pero para nosotros prima la necesidad de identificar correctamente a cada autor y creemos que el ORCID ayuda a ello.

Otro problema habitual es que muchos autores, al citar una fuente de financiación, utilizan el nombre de la entidad financiadora pero a veces no lo ponen completo, o no incluyen el acrónimo o lo que es peor, ponen el nombre pero no el código de la institución o del proyecto. Los autores están acostumbrados a escribir pensando en los lectores “humanos” y no en las máquinas que van a procesar después toda esa información. Nuestro papel, como editores de metadatos, pasa por informarles, de forma didáctica, de la importancia de aportar esos códigos y pedírselos si vemos que no los han incluido en su manuscrito.

Y con respecto a vuestra comunidad, ¿se ha visto beneficiada de vuestro esfuerzo para tener unos metadatos completos y de alta calidad? ¿Están los autores, editores o lectores al tanto de estos esfuerzos o lo valoran?

Para el editor técnico es más sencillo valorarlo, nosotros sabemos cómo funciona el entorno, lo importante que es la interoperabilidad de las plataformas, la rapidez y amplitud de transmisión que puede alcanzar un dato y lo importante que es que esté correcto desde su origen porque luego puede ser muy, muy difícil corregirlo y controlarlo. Somos conscientes también de su posible impacto porque sabemos cómo los sistemas de información se alimentan unos de otros y comparten información, una información que generamos nosotros.

Los editores científicos, autores y lectores suelen valorarlo menos y no siempre son conscientes de su relevancia, aunque no se puede generalizar. Y de hecho, aunque creo que todos deberían tener al menos unas nociones básicas de cómo funciona, creo que los autores ya están bastante saturados con todos los requerimientos que les pedimos para entregar sus manuscritos como para que les pidamos, además, formación específica en metadatos. Para eso (entre otras cosas) estamos los editores, para indicarles qué datos y cómo los deben aportar.

No obstante, hoy en día todo el mundo está familiarizado con lo que son y lo que se puede hacer con los datos, todos consumimos productos muy diversos a través de internet y tenemos al menos nociones de lo que son los metadatos, los datos personales, los algoritmos… Hace años era mucho más complejo hacer didáctica de esto, pero hoy en día cualquiera lo entiende fácilmente y más en un ámbito científico y tecnológico como el de nuestras publicaciones.

Con la vista puesta en el futuro, tenéis algún plan para seguir construyendo sobre lo ya creado? ¿Algún elemento que queráis seguir implementando o prácticas que queráis incorporar en vuestra manera de trabajar?

En editorial CSIC, desde que comenzamos a publicar en formato electrónico y a distribuir nuestras revistas electrónicas en línea, hace ya casi 20 años, siempre estamos tratando de innovar en diseños, plataformas de gestión, formatos de archivo… Hablando de cosas concretas, hemos ampliado el uso obligatorio de ORCID y DOI a las contribuciones que no son puramente artículos científicos (hasta ahora nuestras reseñas, obituarios y textos similares no los tenían) y estamos valorando la implementación de identificadores ROR para organizaciones de investigación.

¿Qué consejos darías a aquellas organizaciones que están comenzando a mejorar la calidad de sus metadatos?

Para aquellos editores que están empezando a reforzar sus metadatos me atrevería a indicar algo aparentemente lógico y sencillo pero que creo que no siempre se hace: que planifiquen con calma y en detalle una política editorial de datos basada en identificar y seleccionar los datos que consideren prioritarios e implementar, después, protocolos para solicitarlos a sus autores e integrarlos en las plataformas editoriales y, por último, configurar correctamente dichas plataformas para asegurar una correcta exportación.

El metadato requiere de una cadena en la que trabajan diversas personas con distintos perfiles, hay que tener recursos para afianzar esa cadena y hay que tener en cuenta que no basta con pedir los datos a los autores, hay que seguir el recorrido de los datos desde su origen hasta donde podamos y eso no termina cuando los depositamos en Crossref: podemos depositarlos de manera adicional en otros sitios, podemos darles otras salidas y, además, debemos volver sobre ellos si detectamos algún error sistemático que podamos corregir.

Los Metadata Excellence Awards fueron entregados en mayo de 2025, en el contexto del encuentro anual de Crossref con su comunidad. Os dejamos el vídeo de aceptación del premio por parte de la revista Boletín Geológico y Minero, editada por Editorial CSIC.

Y ahora disfruta de este vídeo de aceptación.

Version in English

Improving visibility through metadata: a look from CSIC Editorial

We spoke with Nacho Pérez Alcalde, Technical Deputy Director of Editorial CSIC, the publisher behind ‘Boletín Geológico y Minero’, recipient of the Crossref Metadata Award in the Metadata Enrichment category. A Crossref member since 2008, Editorial CSIC publishes 41 Diamond Open Access journals and plays a key role in scholarly communication at the international level. We explore what this award has meant for Editorial CSIC and what plans they have for the future to continue improving the quality and use of their metadata.

What motivates your team to work towards high-quality metadata? What objectives does it support for your organisation?

Editorial CSIC publishes 41 scientific journals, all of which are included in major indexing databases. These are prestigious journals that have offered high-quality, peer-reviewed content for many years. However, today, it is no longer enough for a scientific journal to provide quality content alone; it is now also essential to deliver high-quality metadata associated with those publications. What just a few years ago was considered a value-added service has now become indispensable.

In an electronic and internet-based working environment, metadata is key to content dissemination and to the identification of journals, authors, publishing institutions, and funding organizations. For a publisher, it is crucial to be able to transmit this information through technical procedures and standardised protocols to ensure compatibility with the systems that harvest, store, and distribute data, enhancing the visibility and discoverability of our journals.

Do you have a strategy for complete metadata?

We’ve been working with metadata for years and, periodically, we review and expand the number of elements we convert into metadata. We always prioritise what is already a clearly established standard (for example, ORCID), as well as metadata aligned with editorial policies we consider a priority (such as the CC BY license we apply).

The workflow begins with the editor identifying the data to be collected and how it will be requested. Once this is integrated into the journal’s submission guidelines, the collaboration of authors becomes essential, as they are the ones who provide the data. In a later phase, the data is reviewed by a technical editor specialising in metadata (different from the content reviewer). Finally, it’s crucial to have a tool that enables the automated transfer of metadata, and here, having specialised technical staff is very important.

We work with the OJS platform; I spent years depositing metadata in Crossref using XML files that we generated manually, one by one. With an average of 1,000 articles published per year, the creation of the Crossref XML export module in OJS for automated deposit from the platform was a huge help for us – it significantly lightened the workload, ensured greater reliability, and allowed us to focus our time on improving other aspects.

It also gives us more flexibility when reviewing our data policies. For example, it allowed us to carry out a bulk deposit to update all our references in order to correct a recurring error.

How have you integrated these into your metadata processes?

The Crossref Metadata Enrichment Award was specifically granted to the journal Boletín Geológico y Minero for having shown significant improvement in its metadata in recent years. This journal was previously published by another institution, and when Editorial CSIC took over, we applied the same standards we have been using for our other journals for many years. We are especially proud of this because we see the award as recognition of a metadata policy we’ve been developing over the years, one that has led to significant improvements for this journal in a relatively short time.

The collaboration of the journal’s scientific leadership was key to achieving this. We first explained which data should be requested from authors, why, and for what purpose. Then we ensured that the data was being properly integrated into the articles and implemented it within the OJS platform. From there, we proceeded with depositing the metadata in Crossref and also integrating it into other metadata dissemination channels.

What impact of good metadata can you see for your organisation? Is it supporting the business and/or editorial side of your work?

Beyond their obvious benefits, such as increasing the visibility of our publications and contributing to the management of controlled, high-quality information, they should ultimately help us position ourselves as a professional group. Our essential role is to publish peer-reviewed, high-quality scientific content and deliver it to the scientific community and, increasingly, to society at large. However, today, we should also aim to be recognised as data providers. And that, in the “age of data,” is a significant shift. We must be able to extract metadata from our publications-supplied by authors (keywords, affiliations, bibliographies…). We also need to generate other metadata ourselves, and transmit and disseminate those effectively. Scientific journals must still have editors who perform copy editing and proofreading, but they must also have metadata editors, people who understand what FundRef is, and know where and how to input data into the platform to ensure it is preserved and transferred correctly and efficiently.

That’s why I want to take this opportunity to highlight the role of the editor as a generator and provider of data. Editors are the source of data. There are other actors-like libraries and indexers-who harvest, archive, transmit, and process that data to, for example, create new content or services. But only we have the capacity to generate it.

Have you encountered any challenges in curating or improving your metadata?

Sometimes authors complain about being asked for too much information. For example, the use of ORCID is mandatory in our publications, and many authors, especially those from non-European regions, have complained because they don’t know what it is or what it’s for, or – for personal reasons – they don’t want to register for a personal identifier. These reasons are, of course, valid and understandable, but for us, the priority is to correctly identify each author, and we believe ORCID helps achieve that. Another common issue is that when authors cite a funding source, they often include the name of the funding body, but sometimes don’t write it in full, or they omit the acronym, or worse – they include the name but not the institution or project code. Authors are used to writing with “human” readers in mind, not the machines that will later process all that information. Our role, as metadata editors, involves educating them about the importance of providing these codes and requesting them when we see they’ve been left out of the manuscript.

Have your efforts around metadata led to real benefits for your community? Is this something your editors, authors, or readers are aware of and appreciate? If so, why?

For the technical editor, it’s easier to assess the value of metadata. We understand how the ecosystem works, how important platform interoperability is, how quickly and widely data can be transmitted, and how crucial it is for data to be correct from the very beginning. Once it’s out there, it can be very, very difficult to correct or control. We’re also aware of its potential impact because we know how information systems feed off each other and share information – information that we generate.

Scientific editors, authors, and readers tend to value it less and aren’t always aware of its importance, though of course there are exceptions. While I believe everyone should at least have a basic understanding of how it works, I also think authors are already overwhelmed with all the requirements we ask of them when submitting manuscripts. Editors are here to guide them on what data to provide and how to provide it.

That said, today, everyone is at least somewhat familiar with what data is and what can be done with it. We all consume a wide variety of digital content online and have at least a basic idea of what metadata, personal data, and algorithms are. A few years ago, explaining all this was much more difficult, but nowadays, it’s much easier for people to grasp, especially within the scientific and technological environment in which we publish.

Looking ahead, how are you planning to build on your metadata quality? Are there new elements or practices you’re exploring? And what advice would you give to others just starting to strengthen their metadata?

At Editorial CSIC, ever since we began publishing in electronic format and distributing our journals online, almost 20 years ago, we have consistently sought to innovate in design, management platforms, and file formats. Speaking of specific actions, we have extended the mandatory use of ORCID and DOI to contributions that are not strictly scientific articles (until now, our book reviews, obituaries, and similar texts didn’t have them), and we are currently considering the implementation of ROR identifiers for research organizations.

Do you have any advice for organisations that are making an effort to improve the quality of their metadata?

For editors who are just beginning to strengthen their metadata, I would suggest something that seems logical and simple, but is not always put into practice: take the time to calmly and thoroughly plan a data policy. This should be based on identifying and selecting which data elements are most important, then implementing protocols to request them from authors and integrate them into editorial platforms, and finally, configuring those platforms correctly to ensure proper export.

Metadata involves a chain of tasks carried out by people with different profiles. You need to have resources to strengthen that chain. It’s good to remember that it’s not enough to simply ask authors for data – you have to follow the data along its entire path from the source as far as possible. That journey doesn’t end when we deposit it in Crossref: we can also deposit it in other repositories, find additional ways to disseminate it, and we must revisit it if we detect any recurring errors that can be corrected.

And now enjoy this acceptance video.

From storage closet to metadata champions: ASM's journey toward a smarter scholarly infrastructure

David Haber — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) has earned recognition in Crossref’s Participation Reports for its exceptional metadata coverage among large publishing members––an achievement built on intentional change, technical investment, and collaborative work. In this Q&A, the ASM team shares what that journey looked like, the challenges they’ve tackled, and how centering metadata has helped them better connect research with the global scientific community.

A key lesson we learned is that meaningful progress doesn’t require perfection from day one. Start small, find manageable wins, refine as you go, and build a shared understanding across all your teams.

– David Haber, ASM

Since we first featured your metadata efforts in 2022, what developments or improvements have you made—and how does this new recognition reflect the journey so far?

Once we completed our initial metadata cleanup of our backfile and made sure that we were producing good, clean, and consistent Crossref metadata (no small feat), we realized that each new policy, process, or even style change should be viewed through a metadata capture lens. By looking at our publishing goals through that lens, we are better able to see the right time and method to help enrich and “grow” both our article metadata breadth and depth. Much of the metadata work is invisible or an afterthought. But the recognition of ASM’s coverage in the participation reports has affirmed that our change in perspective — shifting from viewing Crossref metadata as something produced as an afterthought to centering our processes around the creation of that metadata — has put us on the right path.

Have any of your goals around metadata changed or grown since then? What feels different about your work now compared to when you were first featured?

When we first started on our various metadata cleanup projects, it felt like there were just a few of us, arguing, agreeing, and arguing some more about obscure tagging structures and proper XML modeling in a closet––literally… My office actually was an old storage closet, and my pre-pandemic whiteboard still has that ghostly blue haze of angle brackets scribbled with dry-erase markers.

Since then, our goals have shifted significantly. Early on, we just wanted all our content mapped to DOIs; then we thought, “Oh wait. Let’s include as many abstracts as possible. And references. If we have the data, let’s send it.” Now that we have a strong metadata foundation, we can think proactively about what to capture and transmit, how we want to prioritize our efforts, and how to make research we publish more discoverable to those who need it.

Looking back, were there any changes in internal collaboration or external partnerships that influenced your progress?

Over the past three to four years, we have made some significant changes to our partnerships. We migrated to a new online platform (Atypon), a new production partner (Kriyadocs), a new submission platform (Chronoshub), and a new billing system (RLSC). Each of these partnerships allowed us to evaluate how we were capturing metadata, when that capture occurred, and how best to improve the QC process to ensure accuracy and quality. These partnerships accelerated all our efforts to improve hidden metadata and finally brought them out of the storage closet into the light.

Have you adopted any new tools, standards, or technologies since your last blog?

Our production software (Kriyadocs) has centered metadata capture as a core function. We have processes and procedures that match all affiliations to Ringgold and ROR IDs. We have invested heavily in partnerships with organizations like Chronoshub to utilize natural language processing, automating the identification of authors and affiliations, so that users no longer have to fill out tedious forms. We embraced ORCID and strongly encourage all authors to register for one if they don’t already have it. We have also adopted the CRediT taxonomy as a contributor framework and have built processes to make it easy for authors to stay within that taxonomy.

Have you encountered any challenges in curating or improving your metadata? If so – what were they and how did you address those?

The core problem (from our perspective) has always been the difference between author profile information and what is actually submitted in manuscripts. Auto-extraction of manuscript data into submission forms is one small step toward unifying author identity with manuscript data. One of our biggest pain points now is reconciling the chaotic data on author affiliations in manuscripts with institutional identifiers. Over the next year, this will be one of our main initiatives.

The capture of ORCID IDs has improved our ability to match papers to editors and identify hidden conflicts of interest. ORCID IDs have also helped us expand our reviewer pool, as they enable us to better disambiguate individuals with similar names.

Because we now capture CRediT roles in a controlled manner (rather than as loose text in the acknowledgments section), we are better able to identify when authors are contributing equally and how authors determine author order in the byline when this occurs. This analysis was undertaken by one of our Editors-in-Chief to study gender bias when authors contributed equally to a work. Now that we capture CRediT roles as structured data, we can build on his research.

In the last two years, we have also begun capturing Data Availability Statements and Ethics Statements in unique metadata fields (rather than as unstructured text in the body of an article or in the acknowledgments sections) because some of our editors are curious about open data policy compliance and whether there is higher uptake of open science initiatives in certain microbiology fields.

RC: These are very interesting and quite profound results, especially for integrity and equality in the publishing process! Good to see how useful you find this information as we’re approaching our schema updates to include contributor roles, among other things. I see that editors are already on board and taking advantage of high quality metadata. Are authors more engaged with metadata now than before?

Our authors likely are engaged too––though we have tried to build author metadata QC into our proofing and typesetting process in such a way that they wouldn’t even notice.

What challenges have you encountered while sustaining or scaling your metadata work?

In the realm of metadata, there are two standard solutions: 1) hire vendors to clean data at the end (the throw-people-at-the-problem philosophy); or 2) trust a black-box technical solution. The problem with the first method is that it is inefficient and can become expensive. The issue with the second is that, in my experience, most technical solutions have an 80% success rate. That may be acceptable for certain types of data, but it can fail spectacularly at the worst possible moment.

For example, let’s say you find a technical solution that parses affiliation data in such a way as to assign a PID. Great, wonderful. Let’s say your parser is the best natural language processor in the world and makes matches 90% of the time (if you have one that does this, I’m all ears). You announce that you are including these IDs. Everyone cheers. It is great, right? Now, imagine you want to use those IDs to identify subscribing institutions to offer discounts or fee-less publishing for authors. You also want to use those IDs to send alerts to institutional admins of publishing activity. In both situations, achieving 90% accuracy simply won’t work. What we’ve learned is that black-box technology and ’throw people at it’ philosophies cannot work alone. Metadata curation must be a collaborative effort among authors, publishers, funders, and institutions, where the information grows throughout the research process.

What’s next? Are you exploring any new metadata elements or areas (e.g., funding data, peer review metadata, preprints)?

Over the next year, we will focus on CRediT identifiers and pass them to Crossref, along with institutional PIDs (ROR, Ringgold, and ISNI). We are also exploring various ways to capture peer reviewer activity and contributions, which will inevitably lead us down new and interesting paths.

Here’s the thing about metadata that I wish I’d known when I started: it’s not a project with a finish line. It’s more like tending a garden that keeps growing in unexpected directions. Every time you think you’ve got it figured out, someone invents a new identifier, or your authors start doing something creative with their affiliations, or a funder changes their requirements, and suddenly you’re back to the drawing board.

But what I’ve also learned from our journey out of that metaphorical (and literal) storage closet: the best metadata work happens when you start thinking of it as infrastructure. Good metadata is like good plumbing; when it’s working, nobody notices it, but when it’s not, everything backs up and gets messy fast.

If you’re just starting this journey, my advice is this: don’t try to boil the ocean (gosh, I still need to remember that one). Pick one thing. Perhaps it could be ORCID IDs or institutional identifiers. Do it really, really well. Then build on that success. And please, for the love of all that is holy, invest in good partnerships. We couldn’t have done any of this without partners who understood that metadata isn’t just data entry; it’s the connective tissue of scholarly communication.

Of course, even with the best partners and aligned teams, there will still be moments when you’ll sit dumbfounded in front of a screen where an author’s affiliation that was listed as “Bloomberg School of Public Health” matched to the identifier linked to the “Escuela Nacional de Sanidad.” On those days, just remember: at least you’re not still working in a storage closet with a haunted whiteboard.

Good metadata is more than just a technical specification, and it’s not just for those XML wonks and nerds. It’s a service to science, and its core mission is to help us understand the world around us.

– David Haber, ASM

ASM’s story is a reminder that building a strong metadata infrastructure isn’t just about meeting technical requirements—it’s about aligning people, tools, and values around the idea that clean, connected, and consistent metadata is foundational to open and discoverable research. Whether you’re starting small or overhauling major systems, their experience shows what’s possible when you treat metadata not as a checkbox, but as a core part of scholarly publishing.

Thank you, David, for taking the time to share your insights. Again, congratulations!

Metadata excellence among new members: La Salle University, Perú

Yasiel Pérez Vera — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Click here for the version in English

En 2025, lanzamos los Premios Crossref a los Metadatos, con el objetivo de destacar el rol de nuestra comunidad en la gestión y el enriquecimiento del registro académico. En esta publicación, destacamos a la Universidad La Salle, Perú, ganadora del premio a la excelencia entre los nuevos miembros, y contamos con la participación de Yasiel Pérez, Responsable Técnico y Editor de la Revista, quien comparte sus ideas:

Por qué los metadatos importan para nosotros

La Universidad La Salle se convirtió en miembro de Crossref hace relativamente poco tiempo, en 2023. Gestionamos nuestras revistas usando Open Journal Systems (OJS), y una vez que nos unimos a esta comunidad, los diferentes Consejos Editoriales compartimos la motivación de lograr una mayor visibilidad global, y vimos una oportunidad de mejora al proporcionar más metadatos y más completos.

El lado técnico de subsanar las deficiencias

Nuestras revistas, que llevan activas entre dos y cuatro años, han comenzado a enriquecer sus metadatos faltantes a niveles aceptables (¡creemos que aún podemos mejorar a niveles excelentes!). Gracias a mi formación como ingeniero de software, adaptamos el plugin de OJS para que admita campos de metadatos adicionales que no están disponibles en las versiones anteriores. El plugin requiere actualizaciones, por lo que realizamos modificaciones personalizadas para que sea compatible con los esquemas Crossref más recientes. Debido a limitaciones de tiempo, recursos humanos y financieros, consideramos más eficiente adaptar el plugin en lugar de adaptar nuestras instalaciones de OJS a las últimas versiones. Con estas modificaciones, depositamos los ROR ID, las licencias, las páginas de políticas y las actualizaciones de las revistas en Crossmark.

Por otro lado, hemos probado la versión con Soporte a Largo Plazo actual y la versión 3.5 de OJS, y recomiendo encarecidamente a cualquier usuario que actualice a cualquiera de estas versiones más recientes. Incluyen importantes parches de seguridad y, además, los plugins de Crossref son compatibles con los esquemas más recientes. Desafortunadamente, para nosotros, actualizar los sistemas desde una versión anterior a la 3.3 requiere tiempo adicional y soporte técnico, dada la importancia de los cambios de la v3.2 a la v3.3.

Haciendo las políticas sobre metadatos una prioridad

Tenemos un compromiso institucional con la provisión de metadatos enriquecidos. Contamos con políticas que exigen metadatos lo más completos posible como parte de nuestros flujos de trabajo, y lo convertimos en un requisito estricto. Naturalmente, existen algunos desafíos. Los metadatos abiertos y transparentes aún están relativamente poco valorados. A veces, los editores no comprenden completamente las implicaciones de proporcionar metadatos enriquecidos; mostrar su nombre en el sitio web no es lo mismo que tenerlo en los metadatos, por lo que la conexión entre la versión de registro y su visibilidad no siempre es evidente para autores y editores. Los apoyamos proporcionando directrices y capacitación a los consejos editoriales y equipos de las revistas. Por ejemplo, si una afiliación no está disponible en ROR, animamos a los autores a solicitar su inclusión en el registro.

Por otro lado, esto también nos motiva. Nos estamos preparando para empezar a incluir metadatos de subvenciones y financiación en nuestros flujos de trabajo. También apuntamos a utilizar estos datos para estudiar el impacto de nuestras políticas editoriales en la visibilidad, el uso, las citas, la indexación y otras métricas institucionales. La Universidad La Salle es una organización interesante porque formamos una red de universidades de todo el mundo, lo que provoca errores en la identificación adecuada.

Creemos que ciertamente otras organizaciones pueden lograr altos niveles de enriquecimiento de metadatos. Esto tiene dos aspectos fundamentales: uno técnico y otro organizativo. Desde nuestra perspectiva, el primer paso es obtener el apoyo de la organización y establecer políticas a nivel de toda la organización. Las soluciones técnicas pueden seguir después y no son fundamentalmente difíciles en comparación con conseguir que la comunidad proporcione metadatos buenos y completos.

Una vez que se consigue la asignación de recursos, se planifica la hoja de ruta para recopilar más metadatos. Es mejor tenerlos y no usarlos que necesitarlos y no tenerlos. Por ejemplo, ya estamos recopilando los roles de autor utilizando la taxonomía CRediT, por lo que una vez que sea totalmente compatible con el esquema de Crossref, queremos estar preparados para enviarlos. Idealmente, nos gustaría ver compatibilidad con identificadores alternativos y más tipos de fechas. Recopilamos las fechas de envío y aceptación a través de Crossmark y asignamos simultáneamente DOI, PURL y ARK. Con el tiempo suficiente, también planeamos implementar la revisión por pares abierta en nuestras revistas.

Lo que el reconocimiento nos ayudó a lograr

Recibir este premio ha tenido un profundo impacto en nuestra organización; nos ayuda a reforzar el mensaje que intentamos transmitir a nuestra comunidad. Abrió los ojos de las autoridades y los gestores de presupuesto, y también está aumentando la visibilidad de la organización en la región. Queremos ser vistos como un ejemplo en la comunidad local y regional: «Si una institución provincial puede hacerlo, otras también». Hemos comenzado a recibir llamadas solicitando capacitación para otras organizaciones. Por lo tanto, este premio ha sido sin duda fundamental para nosotros.

Version in English

In 2025, we launched the Crossref Metadata Awards, aiming to highlight our community’s role in stewarding and enriching the scholarly record. In this post, we put the spotlight on La Salle University, Perú, winner of the award for excellence among new members, and have Yasiel Pérez, Technical Head and Journal Editor, sharing his insights:

Why metadata matters to us

La Salle University became a Crossref member relatively recently, in 2023. We manage our journals using Open Journal Systems (OJS), and once we became part of this community, the different Editorial Boards had as a common motivation achieving more global visibility, and we saw an opportunity for improvement by providing more and richer metadata.

Technical side of filling the gaps

Our journals that have been active for two to four years started enriching their missing metadata to acceptable levels (we still think we can improve to excellent levels!). Because of my background as a software engineer, we adapted the OJS plugin to support additional metadata fields not yet available in the older versions. The plugin requires updates, so we made custom modifications to support the latest Crossref schemas. Because of time, human, and financial constraints, we found it most efficient to adapt the plugin rather than to adapt our OJS installations to the latest versions. With these modifications, we deposit ROR IDs, licences, and the journals’ policy pages and updates to Crossmark.

On the other hand, we have tested the current Long-term support and the 3.5 versions of OJS and I fully recommend to any user to upgrade to any of these more recent versions, there are important security patches and also the Crossref plugins are compatible with the latest schemas. Unfortunately, for us, upgrading the systems from a version older than 3.3 requires additional time and technical support, given the importance of changes from v3.2 to v3.3.

Making metadata a policy priority

We have an institutional commitment to the provision of rich metadata. We have policies in place to require metadata as complete as possible as part of our workflows and we make this a strict requirement. Naturally, there are some challenges. Open and transparent metadata is still relatively underappreciated. Sometimes editors don’t fully understand the implications of providing rich metadata; displaying your name in the website is not the same as having it on the metadata so the connection between the version of record and its visibility is not always evident for authors and editors. We support them by providing guidelines and training to the editorial boards and journal teams. E.g. if an affiliation is not available in ROR we encourage authors to request their inclusion in the registry.

On the other hand, this is also a motivational push for us. We are preparing to start including grant and funding metadata in our workflows. We also aim to use this data to study the impact of our editorial policies on the visibility, use, citations, indexation, and other institutional metrics. La Salle University is an interesting organization because we are a network of universities across the world, leading to mistakes in proper identification.

We certainly think that other organizations can achieve high levels of metadata enrichment. There are two fundamental aspects to it: A technical aspect and an organizational aspect. From our point of view, the first step is gaining organizational support, establishing organization-wide policies. The technical solutions can follow and are not fundamentally difficult compared with having the community provide good and complete metadata.

Once you manage to secure the assignment of resources, then you plan the roadmap for collecting more metadata. It’s better to have it and not use it than to need it and not have it. For example, we already collect author roles using the CRediT taxonomy, so once it is fully supported by Crossref’s schema, we want to be prepared to submit them. Ideally, we would like to see support for alternative identifiers and more types of dates. We collect submission and acceptance dates via Crossmark and we simultaneously assign DOI, PURL, and ARK. Given enough time, we are also planning to implement open peer review in our journals.

What the recognition helped us achieve

Receiving this award has been profoundly impactful for our organization; it helps us reinforce the message that we are trying to deliver to our community. It opened the eyes of the authorities and budget managers, and it is also increasing the organization’s visibility in the region. We want to be seen as an example in the local and regional community—“if a provincial institution can do it, others can too.” We have started receiving calls requesting training for other organizations. So, this award has certainly become pivotal for us.

Metadata Awards on Crossref

Celebrating Noyam Journals’ Metadata Award

What motivates your team to work towards high-quality metadata?

Do you have a strategy for complete metadata?

What impact of good metadata can you see on your organisation?

Have you encountered any challenges in curating or improving your metadata, and how did you address those?

Have your efforts around metadata led to real benefits for your community?

Looking ahead, how are you planning to build on your metadata quality?

Raising the standard: GigaScience Press on metadata and discoverability

What motivates your organisation/team to work towards high-quality metadata? What objectives does it support for your organisation?

Do you have a strategy for complete metadata? Which elements did you prioritise? What workflows, tools, or collaborations helped you get there?

How have you integrated these into your metadata processes?

What impact of good metadata can you see for your organisation?

Have you encountered any challenges in curating or improving your metadata?

Have your efforts regarding metadata yielded tangible benefits for your community? Is this something your editors, authors, or readers are aware of and appreciate? If so, why?

Looking ahead, how are you planning to build on your metadata quality? Are there new elements or practices you’re exploring? And what advice would you give to others just starting to strengthen their metadata?

An eLife filled with possibility thanks to great metadata

What motivates your organisation/team to work towards high-quality metadata? What objectives does it support for your organisation?

Do you have a strategy for complete metadata? Which elements did you prioritise? What workflows, tools, or collaborations helped you get there?

How have you integrated these into your metadata processes?

What impact of good metadata can you see for your organisation? Is it supporting the business and/or editorial side of your work?

Have you encountered any challenges in curating or improving your metadata? If so, what were they, and how did you address those?

Have your efforts around metadata led to real benefits for your community? Is this something your editors, authors, or readers are aware of and appreciate? If so, why?

Looking ahead, how are you planning to build on your metadata quality? Are there new elements or practices you’re exploring? And what advice would you give to others just starting to strengthen their metadata?

Mejorando la visibilidad a través de los metadatos: una mirada desde Editorial CSIC

¿Seguis alguna estrategia? ¿Cómo decidís qué elementos priorizar?

¿Cómo habéis integrado esto en vuestra estrategia de metadatos?

A nivel de impacto, ¿cómo veis que una buena cobertura de los metadatos afecta a vuestra organización? ¿Beneficia de alguna manera vuestro trabajo editorial? O cualquier otro aspecto de vuestra actividad?

Y con respecto a vuestra comunidad, ¿se ha visto beneficiada de vuestro esfuerzo para tener unos metadatos completos y de alta calidad? ¿Están los autores, editores o lectores al tanto de estos esfuerzos o lo valoran?

Con la vista puesta en el futuro, tenéis algún plan para seguir construyendo sobre lo ya creado? ¿Algún elemento que queráis seguir implementando o prácticas que queráis incorporar en vuestra manera de trabajar?

¿Qué consejos darías a aquellas organizaciones que están comenzando a mejorar la calidad de sus metadatos?

Version in English

Improving visibility through metadata: a look from CSIC Editorial

What motivates your team to work towards high-quality metadata? What objectives does it support for your organisation?

Do you have a strategy for complete metadata?

How have you integrated these into your metadata processes?

What impact of good metadata can you see for your organisation? Is it supporting the business and/or editorial side of your work?

Have you encountered any challenges in curating or improving your metadata?

Have your efforts around metadata led to real benefits for your community? Is this something your editors, authors, or readers are aware of and appreciate? If so, why?

Looking ahead, how are you planning to build on your metadata quality? Are there new elements or practices you’re exploring? And what advice would you give to others just starting to strengthen their metadata?

Do you have any advice for organisations that are making an effort to improve the quality of their metadata?

From storage closet to metadata champions: ASM's journey toward a smarter scholarly infrastructure

Since we first featured your metadata efforts in 2022, what developments or improvements have you made—and how does this new recognition reflect the journey so far?

Have any of your goals around metadata changed or grown since then? What feels different about your work now compared to when you were first featured?

Looking back, were there any changes in internal collaboration or external partnerships that influenced your progress?

Have you adopted any new tools, standards, or technologies since your last blog?

Have you encountered any challenges in curating or improving your metadata? If so – what were they and how did you address those?

Can you share any examples where high-quality metadata clearly benefited your organization, community, or publishing processes?

What challenges have you encountered while sustaining or scaling your metadata work?

What’s next? Are you exploring any new metadata elements or areas (e.g., funding data, peer review metadata, preprints)?

Anything else you want to share?

Metadata excellence among new members: La Salle University, Perú

Por qué los metadatos importan para nosotros

El lado técnico de subsanar las deficiencias

Haciendo las políticas sobre metadatos una prioridad

Lo que el reconocimiento nos ayudó a lograr

Version in English

Why metadata matters to us

Technical side of filling the gaps

Making metadata a policy priority

What the recognition helped us achieve