Become a member - Crossref

Connect your content with the global network of online scholarly research.

Membership of Crossref allows you to connect your content with a global network of 13217 other members from 118 countries. It’s so much more than just getting a DOI for your content. All our members commit to registering complete metadata for their content and keeping it up-to-date - plus linking to other members in their references.

This means that membership comes with responsibilities, but it also means lots of opportunities to improve your discoverability as part of this global network. Our tools and services allow people across the scholarly world (and beyond) to find, cite, link, and assess your publications.

Are you eligible for membership?

Many types of organizations register their content with us. You could be a research institution, a publisher, a government agency, a research funder, or a start-up. In order to become a member, register content and deposit metadata and DOIs, you’ll need to meet the criteria set out in our governing by-laws:

Membership in Crossref is open to organizations that publish professional and scholarly materials and content.

In addition, applicants should be able to meet the terms and conditions of membership. These terms should be carefully reviewed to understand your full obligations and responsibilities. Before applying, you need to make sure that you can definitely fulfil the obligations of membership.

You also have the option to appoint a sponsor to act on your behalf to register metadata or look up references. If you wish to work with a sponsor, don’t fill out our application for membership - instead get in contact with your chosen sponsor. Find out more about Sponsors.

(Please note: if you’re only interested in retrieving and making use of the metadata that’s been registered with Crossref, you don’t need to become a member. Instead, visit our Metadata Delivery page.)

How much does it cost?

All Crossref members pay an annual membership fee, which is tiered depending on your publishing revenue. The tiers start at $275. If you don’t have publishing revenue, we take a look at your publishing expenses. Your first year’s membership fee is payable before your account is created and ready for use. You’ll receive an invoice soon after applying and every year in January.

Once you’re in, we give you a prefix for your DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers). You create the suffixes and you begin to register content with us. You’re charged a fee for each content item whose metadata you register with us. Fees vary per content type and are lower for backfiles. Review the content registration fees for more detail. These fees are invoiced quarterly in arrears.

A promise

Joining Crossref is a promise to look after your content. For our part, we promise to maintain and develop the community infrastructure for the long-term. For your part, you commit to create and maintain your metadata. Membership therefore comes with a bit of work on your end. Among other things you agree to:

Assign Crossref DOIs and deposit metadata to all journal content published after joining Crossref.
Maintain and update your metadata and DOIs for the long term. DOIs are designed to be persistent in order to preserve the citation record, so should never be deleted. You’ll update URLs associated with all registered content, redepositing metadata if your content moves.
Ensure that your DOIs resolve to a page containing complete bibliographic information for the content with a link to—or information about—getting the full text of the content. You must include the DOI on the response page using Crossref DOI display guidelines, and use the DOI as the permanent link to the page. (Note that Crossref never gives (and cannot give) access to your full-text - your access policy remains at your own discretion.
Actively maximize links with other Crossref members by linking out from the references in your journal articles, (using DOIs retrieved from Crossref), and where possible from other content types too.

You can find the full details on these obligations in our terms and conditions of membership.

Ready to apply? What you’ll need

Once you’re sure you can meet the obligations of membership, you’re ready to apply.

Ready to apply? Start here.

Please contact us if you have any questions about joining as a member.

Membership terms

Updated July 2018 These Crossref Terms of Membership (these “Terms”) set forth the terms and conditions of membership in The Publishers International Linking Association, Inc. d/b/a Crossref (“Crossref”), a nonprofit corporation organized under the laws of New York, USA. Background Crossref is a not-for-profit membership organization that exists to make scholarly communications better. Its mission is to "make research outputs easy to find, cite, link, and assess." To that end, Crossref: manages and maintains a database of information ("

Similarity Check terms

Updated June 2019 SIMILARITY CHECK SERVICE TERMS IMPORTANT NOTICE: These Similarity Check Service Terms (“Service Terms”) are a binding legal contract between you (“Member”) and Publishers International Linking Association, Inc. (d/b/a “Crossref” and together with Member, the “parties”), a nonprofit corporation (“Crossref”) organized under the laws of New York, USA. By click-through accepting these Service Terms, Member is agreeing to be bound by these Service Terms. Member may only sign these Service Terms OR access, or use the Service if Member is in compliance with and not in breach of the Membership Terms.

Benefits of membership

There are many other DOI registration agencies that are members of the International DOI Foundation. But no other DOI registration agency offers the broad range of infrastructure and services that specifically support scholarly content. Others specialize in a particular region or language or content type. Or even totally different industries such as construction, or movies. And no one else does it quite like us, either. Take a look through our six truths, to understand the guiding principles that are important to our community.

Understanding our billing

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. How the invoice schedule works Our annual membership invoices are sent out each January, and our Content Registration invoices are generated four times a year, one per quarter.

Advice for small publishers

We have thousands of small publisher members from all over the world. Being small-scale doesn’t limit your ability to connect your content with the global network of online scholarly research. Each Crossref member also gets to cast their vote to create a board that represents all types of organizations. If you publish one journal or thousands, you’re welcome to join our growing community. Apply Find out more about what becoming a member involves.