Metadata is one of the most important tools needed to communicate with each other about science and scholarship. It tells the story of research that travels throughout systems and subjects and even to future generations. We have metadata for organising and describing content, metadata for provenance and ownership information, and metadata is increasingly used as signals of trust.
Following our panel discussion on the same subject at the ALPSP University Press Redux conference in May 2024, in this post we explore the idea that metadata, once considered important mostly for discoverability, is now a vital element used for evidence and the integrity of the scholarly record.
For the third year in a row, Crossref hosted a roundtable on research integrity prior to the Frankfurt book fair. This year the event looked at Crossmark, our tool to display retractions and other post-publication updates to readers.
Since the start of 2024, we have been carrying out a consultation on Crossmark, gathering feedback and input from a range of members. The roundtable discussion was a chance to check and refine some of the conclusions we’ve come to, and gather more suggestions on the way forward.
https://0-doi-org.lib.rivier.edu/10.13003/ief7aibi
In our previous blog post in this series, we explained why no metadata matching strategy can return perfect results. Thankfully, however, this does not mean that it’s impossible to know anything about the quality of matching. Indeed, we can (and should!) measure how close (or far) we are from achieving perfection with our matching. Read on to learn how this can be done!
How about we start with a quiz?
We’re in year two of the Resourcing Crossref for Future Sustainability (RCFS) research. This report provides an update on progress to date, specifically on research we’ve conducted to better understand the impact of our fees and possible changes.
Crossref is in a good financial position with our current fees, which haven’t increased in 20 years. This project is seeking to future-proof our fees by:
Making fees more equitable Simplifying our complex fee schedule Rebalancing revenue sources In order to review all aspects of our fees, we’ve planned five projects to look into specific aspects of our current fees that may need to change to achieve the goals above.
To work out which version you’re on, take a look at the website address that you use to access iThenticate. If you go to ithenticate.com then you are using v1. If you use a bespoke URL, https://crossref-[your member ID].turnitin.com/ then you are using v2.
Use doc-to-doc comparison to compare a primary uploaded document with up to five comparison uploaded documents. Any documents that you upload to doc-to-doc comparison will not be indexed and will not be searchable against any future submissions.
Uploading a primary document to doc-to-doc comparison will cost you a single document submission, but the comparison documents uploaded will not cost you any submissions.
Start from Folders, go to the Submit a document menu, and click Doc-to-Doc Comparison.
The doc-to-doc comparison screen allows you to choose one primary document and up to five comparison documents. Choose the destination folder for the documents you will upload. The Similarity Report for the comparison will be added to the same folder.
For your primary document, provide the author’s first name, last name, and document title. If you do not provide these details, the filename will be used for the title, and the author details will stay blank.
If you have administrator permissions, you can assign the Similarity Report for the comparison to a reporting group by selecting one from the Reporting Group drop-down. Learn more about reporting groups.
Click Choose File, and select the file you want to upload as your primary document. See the file requirements for both the primary and comparison documents on the right of the screen.
You can choose up to five comparison documents to check against your primary document. These do not need to be given titles and author details. Each of the filenames must be unique. Click Choose Files, and select the files you would like to upload as comparison documents. To remove a file from the comparison before you upload it, click the X icon next to the file. To upload your files for comparison, click Upload.
Once your document has been uploaded and compared against the comparison documents, it will appear in your chosen destination folder.
This upload will have ‘Doc-to-Doc Comparison’ beneath the document title to show that this is a comparison upload and has not been indexed.
The upload will be given a Similarity Score against the selected comparison documents, which is also displayed in the report column. Click the similarity percentage to open the doc-to-doc comparison in the Document Viewer.
The Document Viewer is separated into three sections:
Along the top of the screen, the paper information bar shows details about the primary document, including document title, author, date the report was processed, word count, number of comparison documents provided, and how many of those documents matched with the primary document.
On the left panel is the paper text - this is the text of your primary document. Matching text is highlighted in red.
Your comparison documents will appear in the sources panel to the right, showing instances of matching text within the submitted documents.
By default, the doc-to-doc comparison will open the Document Viewer in the All Sources view. This view lists all the comparison documents you uploaded. Each comparison document has a percentage showing the amount of content within them that is similar to the primary document. If a comparison document has no matching text with the primary document, it has 0% next to it.
Doc-to-doc comparison can also be viewed in Match Overview mode. In this view, the comparison documents are listed with highest match percentage first, and all the sources are shown together, color-coded, on the paper text.
Page owner: Kathleen Luschek | Last updated 2020-May-19