As a not-for-profit membership organization we have a duty to remain sustainable and manage our finances in a responsible way. Financial sustainability means we can keep the organization afloat and keep our dedicated service to scholarly communications running.
This billing page should answer any questions you might have about our billing processes and the invoices you receive.
Our annual membership invoices are sent out each January, and our Content Registration invoices are generated four times a year, one per quarter. If you’re using the Similarity Check service, you’ll also receive your document-checking invoice each January.
All invoices are emailed to the billing contact for your organization (so, please be sure to update us with any contact changes) and have a due date of net 45 days.
When you receive invoices from us you will see a âpay nowâ link in the body of the email. This link takes you to our payment portal where you can pay in a fast and convenient way, and it also allows you to view all your invoices as PDFs.
An important part of our accounting process is the automated invoice reminder schedule. There are three billing reminders we send by email:
We understand there are many factors that can make prompt payment a challenge for some people: international transfer delays or fees; funding for your publishing operations may end; change of contacts; problems receiving our emails, etc.
When an account is 90 days past due, a further email will be sent to all the contacts we hold on your account (Billing Business, Voting, Technical and Metadata Quality) to notify you that your service is at risk of suspension. If an account becomes suspended for non-payment it then becomes at risk of being âterminatedâ. Once an account has been terminated, you will need to contact our membership specialist to rejoin Crossref. Please note that we send numerous notifications/reminders before suspension or termination takes place (we donât want to see you go!). We can always be reached at billing@crossref.org for any invoice inquiries you may have. Please include your account name, prefix(es) and any relevant invoice numbers.
Here are some things you can do to help speed up, or simplify payments:
billing@crossref.org a âsafeâ email address, so that you receive our invoices and reminders.accounts@publisher.com so that if somebody leaves that job, invoices can still get through.Donât worry, this isnât a mistake.
When you first apply to join Crossref, youâll receive a pro-rated Membership Order for the remainder of that calendar year. Soâdepending on when you joinâyouâll only pay for the remaining months of that year.
The calculation will also reflect whether you apply in the first or second half of the month. For example, if you join before the middle of July (the 15th), your membership order will be for six months. If you join after the middle of July, your membership order will be for five months.
Then, in the following January, youâll receive an invoice for the whole of that calendar year, and will continue to receive invoices every subsequent January.
Unfortunately, no, we cannot change the document type. We have hundreds of organizations that apply for membership with good intentions, but then decide that timing, or other factors, delay them from completing the joining process. For this reason we issue a Membership Order vs a Membership Invoiceâas an order more accurately reflects the status of the joining process in our accounting system.
There are two different types of invoice that all members receive from us. If you participate in Similarity Check, there’s a third invoice you’ll receive.
Your annual membership fee invoice
This allows you to remain a member of our organization, and members receive this invoice in January each year. If you participate in Similarity Check, your annual fee for Similarity Check will also be included in this invoice.
Deposit invoices
These are generated quarterly and cover the deposit fees for the content you register with us during that quarter:
Please note: If your content registration charges are below USD $100 for a quarter, those charges will roll forward to the next quarter. Youâll be invoiced when your total charges exceed USD $100, or in the last quarter of the year, whichever occurs first.
Similarity Check document checking invoices
If you participate in the Similarity Check service, you’ll receive an extra invoice each January to cover the fees for all the documents you’ve checked in the previous year. Your first 100 documents are free though, so if you check fewer than 100 documents, you won’t receive an invoice.
Payment terms are 45 days.
Our current fees are always available on our fees page.
What we can change
If the invoice hasnât yet been paid, we can make the following changes:
What we canât change
No tax will be added to your invoice - there’s no tax on membership fees or any of the services we offer.
Unfortunately not. A suspension is not a termination of your membership, it just temporarily suspends your ability to register content with us. As soon as payment for past due balances is received, your service will be restored and you will be able to register content again.
We send invoices for the metadata you register with us on a quarterly basis. However, if the amount comes to less than USD $100, weâll roll it on to the next quarter. If you havenât reached USD $100 in fees by the last quarter of the year, weâll send out an invoice anyway.
This is to avoid members having to pay lots of âsmallâ invoices. This is particularly important for members outside the US, who may incur international charges on each invoice.
CY stands for current content (Current Year), and BY stands for backfile content (Back Year). Youâre charged a different amount depending on the content type youâre registering, and also whether the content is current (CY) or backfile (BY).
Current content is anything registered with us with a publication date in the current year, or up to two years previously. For example, in 2020, current content is anything with a publication date in 2020, 2019 or 2018. In 2021, this will change to anything with a publication date in 2021, 2020 or 2019.
Backfile content is anything registered with us with a publication date older than this. So in 2020, backfile content is anything published in 2017 or earlier. In 2021 this will become anything published in 2018 or earlier.
Content Registration fees differ according to whether the content you register is current (this year and the previous two years) or backfile (older than that).
A record is determined to be either back year or current year based on the publication date in your metadata. If you use our web deposit form, the system looks at the information youâve entered into the âpublication dateâ field. If you deposit XML directly with us, the system looks at the date in the <publication_date> element. And we look at each individual item separatelyâso even if youâve put a publication date at the journal level, you still need to put it at the journal article level too.
If youâve been charged âcurrentâ fees for content that is actually backfile, itâs probably because the wrong date was put in the publication date field. We have had instances where members have accidentally put the date they registered the content into that field, rather than the date of publication.
You can fix this by re-depositing your content with the correct publication dates. Let our technical support specialists know as soon as youâve done this so we can provide you with an amended invoice.
Users of our Similarity Check service receive an invoice each January for the documents they’ve checked in the previous year. The Similarity Check administrator for each organization can monitor their spend throughout the year by checking the reports section of the iThenticate platform (under the “Manage Users” tab).
That report shows the number of documents checked, but there are some adjustments made before you receive your invoice which might explain why what you see in iThenticate is slightly higher or slightly lower than what you see on your document checking invoice.
No charge for accidental duplicates
If you accidentally check the same document several times, we treat this as a duplicate and don’t charge you for it. This includes any documents with exactly the same filename and exactly the same Similarity Score that are submitted within the same 24 hour period.
This means that you may see slightly fewer document checks on your invoice than you see on your iThenticate report.
Documents above a certain size are considered more than one document
For billing purposes, a single document is considered anything of 25,000 words or fewer.
So if you check a document of 25,001 - 50,000 words, it will be considered 2 document checks. If you check a document of 50,001 - 75,000 words, it will be considered 3 document checks. And so on.
This means that you may see slightly more document checks on your invoice than you do in the iThenticate platform.
Your first 100 documents are free of charge
Your first 100 documents are free of charge, so you’ll see 100 fewer document checks on your invoice than you see in the iThenticate platform.
For âstandardâ content registration, youâre only charged when you first register a DOI, and any subsequent updates are free. However, up until the end of 2019 there was an extra charge for adding Crossmark metadata into a record.
Because of this, you may see more charges for Crossmark than you do for journal articles on older invoices. For example, if you registered 200 journal articles and added Crossmark into those 200 articles, plus you added another 50 Crossmark data to existing DOIs, you will have seen journal article charges for 200 items plus a Crossmark charge for 250 items.
If you still have a question about your invoices, we’d be happy to help.