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Changing fees to increase equity and reduce complexity

Amanda Bartel, Kornelia Korzec, Ginny Hendricks – 2025 July 28

In CommunityMembership

The Crossref Board approved three recommendations for changes to our fees: introduction of a new lowest membership fee tier, removal of volume discounts for record registration, and normalisation of registration fees for peer reviews. The changes will be applied from January 2026.

This is the first outcome of the Resourcing Crossref for Future Sustainability (RCFS) program, launched in 2023, as a comprehensive effort to review all aspects of Crossref revenue and how we’re adapting to growth and the diversification of our membership. The program aims to make fees more equitable, simplify our complex fee schedule, and rebalance revenue sources.

Following two rounds of member surveys, feedback gathered from the community in polls, open discussions, and emails, the Membership and Fees (M&F) Committee (made up of 30+ representatives from members, service providers, sponsors, and community partners) discussed evidence and made the first round of recommendations to the Board this month. We’re very thankful for their time spent reviewing data and sharing their experiences to get to this point.

GOAL 1: More equitable fees

Our membership has changed over the years - members now tend to be less well-resourced, more likely to be based in Asia or Latin America, and more likely to be much smaller operations, some of which may not even be organisations but volunteer groups. We are seeing more universities join as members, and fewer members now consider themselves publishers first and foremost. With our mission of creating a complete global research nexus, this growing diversity is excellent news.

While new member growth is steady (2.3k members per year), over half join via a Sponsor (that makes membership more accessible both financially and technically), and close to 300 members have their membership revoked due to unpaid invoices each year, indicating that the current fee may be a barrier to participation for some.

Define a new basis for sizing and tiering members for their capacity to pay

Our annual membership fees are currently tiered according to the publishing revenue or expenses (whichever is higher) of each member. This enables each member to contribute to the community infrastructure according to their capacity to pay.

One of the first areas under consideration throughout 2024 was an option to change the basis of our membership fees from the publishing revenue (or expenses) to overall organisational revenue (or expenses). Through surveys, discussions with the M&F committee, and at the Crossref 2024 Annual Meeting, we received strong feedback, particularly from those based at institutions and/or following a diamond open-access model, that making this change, whilst more inclusive of non-publishers, would put Crossref beyond their reach.

It became clear that we should not change the basis for sizing and tiering members; instead, we will maintain the current basis (publishing revenue/expenses, whichever is higher). For non-publisher members, we advise taking ‘publishing’ to mean ‘producing’, so taking their cost of producing the works being registered with us, whether that is data, software, imagery, physical objects, etc.

Evaluate the USD $275 annual membership fee tier and propose a more equitable pricing structure, which might entail breaking this down into two or more different tiers.

We also looked into making our fees more equitable. It’s been long recognised that our lowest fee tier (US $275 fee tier for all members with publishing revenue up to US $1 million) represents a huge diversity of organisations operating within a range of financial contexts - over 95% of our paying members are in this category, and this is the category almost all new members join in. Throughout the project, we ran various surveys with our members to learn more about the makeup and factors affecting the capacity to pay for this group.

From January 2026, we will create a new tier for members whose publishing revenue/expenses (whichever is higher)  is equal to or lower than US $1,000 per year. Based on survey data, we expect 30-60% of our current members in the US $275 tier to be in this category. This tier will be set at US $200 in 2026, which is 27% lower than the current $275 membership fee. We will monitor the uptake in this category, with a view to identify necessary adjustments in future years.

Our Membership team will reach out to help qualifying members change to the new tier well before January 2026. If your revenue or expenses are equal to or lower than US $1,000 per year,  look out for our email in the next couple of weeks to help you transition to the lower US $200 tier. 

GOAL 2: Simplify complex fees

Address and adjust volume discounts for Content Registration

We currently offer volume discounts for several of our record types. These are calculated at the end of each quarter.

In order to reduce the complexity of our pricing, we will eliminate all volume discounts. They are underused, accessible only to a small percentage of members, and the financial impact of making the change is small. These discounts contribute to complexity in our billing process and block our ability to offer members a running total or provide leaving members with a timely final invoice.

Having consulted with affected organisations, we’re reassured that the change will not adversely affect their ability to register their works with us. We appreciate their understanding of the overall positive impact of this change for Crossref and their support for our sustainability.

Reduce complexity in peer review pricing

Finally, prompted by feedback from our members, we looked into normalising fees for peer review registration. We currently have two sets of pricing for peer reviews based on whether the review is registered by the owner of the item being reviewed. There is a charge for the first review for a specific article, and a different charge for subsequent reviews for the same article, which also varies depending on who registered the review. Very few members register peer reviews for records that they do not own, so having a separate, higher set of fees just adds complexity to the fee schedule with no financial or strategic benefit.

Starting from January 2026, we will consolidate all peer review pricing, regardless of who registers it, to US $0.25 for the first review for an article, and free registration for any subsequent reviews of that same record.

Address and adjust backfile discounts for record registration

Another recommendation, related to the removal of back-year discounts for select record types (conference proceedings, technical reports and working papers, theses and dissertations, and posted content/preprints) due to underuse, hasn’t been approved yet. More research will be conducted on trends related to specific record types, such as theses and dissertations, so we can better understand potential unintended consequences of such changes.

We’re looking to retain back-file discounts for record types where they continue to be well-used, including those for journal articles and book titles. We’re also looking to retain back-file discounts for grants, as these are at an early stage of adoption, and new funders coming on board naturally start with a backlog of grants to register in the Grant Linking System.

What happens next?

The Resourcing Crossref for Future Sustainability program is very broad, and in the coming months you can expect progress with other aspects of our revenue. There is more work to come, including the rebalancing of revenue from the use of our metadata, the future of fees for our funder members, and further changes to record registration fees.

We’re glad to see the first changes progressing to implementation, and would like to thank our Membership and Fees Committee and all members who took part in the consultations so far for your continuous support.