Hello, 

As the research landscape evolves – we’re working to ensure that our infrastructure keeps up! We’re continuing to develop the metadata and infrastructure that helps the Research Nexus more accurately reflect how researchers, research funders, publishers, and research institutions work together. 

In this newsletter we’re sharing the release of our new schema and what metadata is now possible to include (yes - It’s CRediT!), and what we’re working on next.

We’re also making sure our members can adopt rich metadata for their records. Read on to find out more about the launch of our Service Providers Program (now open for applications from organisations that provide tools for our members to register their metadata).

Finally, we celebrate a couple of milestones in rich metadata our community achieved together, and invite your abstracts for talks at the #Crossref2026 Annual Meeting.

Best,
Reyhana

Research is collaborative and contributors often play many different roles throughout the life of a research project. Our latest Schema 5.5 now reflects this reality, enabling the deposit of multiple contributor roles per contributor, adding new roles in our vocabulary, and including long-awaited compatibility with the CRediT taxonomy. 

Read about all the new updates in Schema 5.5 

Metadata development often starts with a simple question: What information does the community need to better describe and connect research? This is exactly how Crossref has developed its metadata; by listening to what the community needs. With the launch of Schema 5.5, now we’re turning our attention to updating the grant schema, and later – further improvements to names, organisational identifiers and statements with schema 6.6. 

Learn how feedback has shaped our metadata development, and what we’re working on next.

We recently celebrated a milestone of 2 billion citations in our metadata corpus that reflects years of development and investment in scholarly publishing. Coincidentally, this year also marks the 20th anniversary (lots of milestones!) of our Cited-by service that helps members retrieve citation links to their publications. 

Read about why this milestone is important for science. 

Grant metadata plays an important role in connecting the research ecosystem. With more than 200,000 grants now registered in our metadata corpus, funders are helping create richer links between funding, researchers, and research outputs.

Hear from three funders who have taken the responsibility to steward their own grant metadata

Watch how connecting grants to research outputs supports open science and policy compliance. The recording is available in English and Spanish.

We've recently launched a new version of the Crossref Service Providers Program, creating clearer pathways for organisations that help members adopt richer metadata.

Read about the program and submit your application. 

The Crossref Annual Meeting is where our global community comes together to explore the future of scholarly infrastructure. You will be able to join us online on 22 October 2026 for updates and discussions on research integrity, metadata, and tools that help us build a robust Research Nexus, and of course the Board elections!

We're now inviting submissions for short community talks – where you can share your updates on all things metadata too. These fast-paced sessions are always popular with attendees of our Annual Meeting. Whether you have a practical case study, a metadata success story, research to share, or reflections on your journey with Crossref, we'd love to hear from you! Submissions close on 4th September 2026.