Fees

Our membership fees for organizations who will be registering published content are tiered depending on the publishing revenue or expenses of your organization. Please select your tier from the table below, and use the higher number of either:

1. Total annual publishing revenue from all the divisions of your organization (the member is considered to be the largest legal entity) for all types of activities (advertising, sales, subscriptions, databases, article charges, membership dues, etc). Or, if no publishing revenue then:
2. Total annual publishing operations expenses including (but not limited to) staff costs, hosting, outsourcing, consulting, typesetting, etc.

Since 2019, funders are able to register DOIs for the research grants they have awarded. Their annual membership fees are lower than for all other members, but their grant registration fees are higher. Funder fees are tiered depending on your annual award value.

Content Registration (metadata deposit) fees are one-time fees for the initial registration of content with us. There are no fees for updating the metadata for registered content. These fees are usually billed quarterly in arrears. There are different fees for different content types and some fees are different depending on the publication date of the content. Some content types have volume discounts available.

If you are a member through a sponsor, your sponsor will pay content registration fees on your behalf (but they may also charge you for their services - more here).

If you are eligible for the GEM program, you will not pay content registration fees - more here.

Content registration fees by content type

*Note: “Current” content includes the current calendar year + the previous two calendar years, and “Backfile” is anything older than that. So for content registered with Crossref in 2023, current content is anything registered with publication/award dates of 2023, 2022 or 2021. Backfile is anything registered with publication/award dates of 2020 or before.

Volume discounts: peer reviews

If you register multiple peer reviews for the same article, then volume discounts apply. The prices and discounts are different depending on whether you are the publisher of the article being reviewed. Volume discounts don’t apply across reviews for different articles.

Registered by the title publisher

Registered by an organization who is not the publisher of the title being reviewed

Volume discounts: preprints and other posted content

Volume discounts: book chapters and reference entries for a single title

If you’re depositing a lot of chapters or reference works for the same title in the same quarter year, the following discounts apply:

The higher tiers are for encyclopaedias, in case you’re wondering how a single title could possibly have 100,000 chapters!

Volume discounts: datasets and components

If you’re registering a lot of components or datasets for a single title in the same quarter year, the following discounts apply. There is no difference in price between current and backfile content for datasets and components.

Members of Crossref can participate in Similarity Check. The service fee is 20% of your annual membership fee and is included in your annual membership fee invoice.

Each document run through Similarity Check is charged at a per-document-checking fee, and there are volume discounts. There is a separate invoice for Similarity Check document checking fees. This invoice is sent annually in January for the previous years’ usage.

If you want to get and use our metadata, you don’t need to be a Crossref member. We have various free public APIs available that you can use without contacting us. We also offer the Metadata Plus service for an annual subscription fee - this is offered to members and non-members alike. You’ll receive an annual fee for this service each January - but if you initially sign up during the year, your fees will be prorated for the remainder of that calendar year.

The Metadata Plus service offers combined machine access to all available metadata in XML and JSON formats with additional features. This is also available openly via our Public APIs. The Plus service offers extra guarantees and features.

Please select your tier from the table below, using one of the following criteria:

1. For commercial organizations, the subscriber is considered to be the largest legal entity. The fee tier is selected based on the total annual revenue of all the divisions of your organization for all activities.
2. For non-profit and government organizations, the subscriber is considered to be the department(s) or agency(ies) making use of the service. The fee tier is selected based on whichever is the higher between your total annual revenue (including earned and fundraised, e.g. grants) or annual operating expenses (including personnel and non-personnel, e.g. occupancy, equipment, licenses, etc.).

You don’t have to tell us your total revenue/income/funding, just the category you are in. Let us know if you’re not sure.

If you’re an organization who works on behalf of groups of smaller organizations that want to register content with Crossref, you’ll be set up as a Sponsor. Sponsors work directly with us in order to provide administrative, technical and—if applicable—language support to the communities they work with.

The annual membership fee you pay as a Sponsor is based on the total annual publications revenue, income or funding of all the organizations you support, whichever is higher.

Each quarter you will also be sent an invoice for any content items that have been registered by the organizations that you sponsor. The charges are listed by each organization’s prefix on the invoice. There are different fees for different content types and the fees are also different depending on the publication date of the content. You will be asked to recategorize your annual fee at the end of every year, as the number of sponsoring members you represent grows.