To date, there are about 100 Crossref members who have made use of our co-access service for one or more of their books. The service was designed to be a last-resort measure when multiple parties - book publishers, aggregators, and other members - had rights to register book content. Unfortunately, the service allowed members to register multiple DOIs for shared books and book chapters, thereby violating our own core tenet of one DOI per content item. We should not have created a service that violated that tenet, resulting in duplicate DOIs. As we are able to offer an alternative in the form of the multiple resolution service, it is time to switch co-access off. Among other benefits – for the publisher and the authors, creation of a single DOI for each item, regardless of where it might be hosted, will result in more accurate citation counts and usage statistics. We’re retiring co-access at the end of 2026.
This month marks one year since the Dutch Research Council (NWO) introduced grant IDs—an important milestone in our journey toward more transparent and trackable research funding. We created over 1,600 Crossref Grant IDs with associated metadata. We are beginning to see them appear in publications. These early examples show the enormous potential Grant IDs have. They also highlight that publishers could extend their efforts to improve the quality of funding metadata of publications.
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.
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.
A service provided by Crossref and powered by iThenticate—Similarity Check provides editors with a user-friendly tool to help detect plagiarism.
Our Similarity Check service helps Crossref members prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism by providing immediate feedback regarding a manuscript’s similarity to other published academic and general web content, through reduced-rate access to the iThenticate text comparison software from Turnitin.
Only Similarity Check members benefit from this tailored iThenticate experience that includes read-only access to the full text of articles in the Similarity Check database for comparison purposes, discounted checking fees, and unlimited user accounts per organisation.
Watch the introductory Similarity Check animation in your language:
With editors under increased pressure to assess higher volumes of manuscript submissions each year, it’s important to find a fast, cost-effective solution that can be embedded into your publishing workflows. Similarity Check allows editors to upload a paper, and instantly produces a report highlighting potential matches and indicating if and how the paper overlaps with other work. This report enables editors to assess the originality of the work before they publish it, providing confidence for publishers and authors, and evidence of trust for readers. And as the iThenticate database contains over 78 million full-text scholarly content items, editors can be confident that Similarity Check will provide a comprehensive and reliable addition to their workflow.
Making sure only original research is published provides:
peace of mind for publishers and authors that their content is identified and protected,
a way for editors to educate their authors and ensure the reputation of their publication, and
clarity for readers around who produced the work.
Benefits of Similarity Check
Similarity Check participants enjoy use of iThenticate at reduced cost because they contribute their own published content into Turnitin’s database of full-text literature. This means that as the number of participants grows, so too does the size of the database powering the service. More content in the database means greater peace of mind for editors looking to determine a manuscript’s originality.
If you participate in Similarity Check, not only do you get reduced rate access to iThenticate, but you also have the peace of mind of knowing that any similarity between your published content and manuscripts checked by other publishers will be flagged as a potential issue too.
As a Similarity Check user, you also see extra features in iThenticate, such as enhanced text-matches within the Document Viewer.
How the Similarity Check service works
To participate in Similarity Check, you need to be a member. Similarity Check subscribers allow Turnitin to index their full catalogue of current and archival published content into the iThenticate database. This means that the service is only available to members who are actively publishing DOI-assigned content and including in their metadata full-text URLs specifically for Similarity Check.
Turnitin indexes members’ content directly via its Content Intake System (CIS). Its CIS accesses our metadata daily to collect the full-text content links provided by our members within their metadata. Turnitin follows these URLs and indexes the content found at each location.
When you apply for the Similarity Check service, Turnitin will check that they can access your existing content via the full-text URLs in your Crossref metadata. Once confirmed, you’ll be provided with access to the iThenticate tool where you will be able to submit manuscripts to compare against the corpus of published academic and general web content in Turnitin’s database. You can do this in the iThenticate tool, or through your manuscript submission system using an API. iThenticate provides a Similarity Report containing a Similarity Score and a highlighted set of matches to similar text. Editors can then further review matches in order to make their own decision regarding a manuscript’s originality.
Similarity Check fees are in two parts: an annual service fee, and a per-document checking fee.
The annual service fee is 20% of your Crossref annual membership fee and is included in the renewal invoices you receive each January. When you first join Similarity Check, you’ll receive a prorated invoice for the remainder of that calendar year.
Per-document checking fees are also paid annually in January. Volume discounts apply, and your first 100 documents are free of charge.
Similarity Service status page
Check the Turnitin service status page for real-time updates on system performance and any ongoing issues that may impact your Similarity Check service.
