Author: Ángel Torres – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion
Crossref is a non-profit organization aimed to improving access, communication and search in the academic community. Currently, the platform contains almost 10,000 members from 114 countries that use the services offered, among the most popular services are Fundref, Crosscheck, Crossmark and Crosstech.
First, Fundref is a database used to provide information about the funding received in the investigations. Specifically, it allows organizations to monitor and follow up on the grants issued, guarantees the particular clauses of the funders, increases the transparency of the results of the financing and proposes visibility to the funding sources. In summary, Fundref acts in a favorable manner with the Research and Development institutions (I+D), giving it an up-to-date record of its investment in publications published on important databases such as Scopus.
For its part, Similarity Check, previously known as Crosscheck is a manuscript comparison service aimed to the creation of a database based on the similarity between publications. The main tool of this service is based on the access to the antiplagiarism software denominated iThenticate sponsored by Turnitin that provides an immediate feedback on the content of the publications, demonstrating the originality of the research through the search of coincidences in other publications as well as in the general content published on Internet.
Crossmark is a system for reviewing articles after its publication that allows updating the information of manuscripts and authors, including the ORCID identification number, new bibliography that optimizes the understanding of the data obtained, correction of errata, complementary data, financing, license details, among others. Publications that contain the Crossmark logo means that the journal offers the opportunity to add extra information without modifying the base of the study, thus endorsing the premise that manifests the dynamic nature of the publications.
Finally, CrossTech is a technical blog for academic publishers formalizing the establishment of a specialized protected space for discussions related to changes in the academic environment. Under that tenor, it seeks to develop a community to know the common guidelines in publishing technologies, share experiences and expand new editorial practices. Although Crosstech is the service less used by the members of Crossref, the experts still keep it at their disposal to solve doubts in the editorial processes.
In short, Crossref is a necessary platform to take into account both by publishers, reviewers and authors. Evidently, the practicality of its services improves the quality and transparency of publications. In addition, it contains other services such as Reference Linking, Cited by and Event Data that will be reviewed in an upcoming blog post.
