Crossref has always aimed to keep membership barriers low. We believe the best way to support a healthy scholarly ecosystem is to make metadata about published work as open and transparent as possible, enabling members to demonstrate their practices through clear “trust signals.” And when practices fall short, the metadata itself provides a way to surface those issues. You can read more about our approach to supporting the Integrity of the Scholarly Record here.
For years, our membership terms have allowed us to revoke membership in cases of fraudulent use of metadata or identifiers—but we’ve had less clarity around how to respond when a member’s broader practices raise concerns. After consultation with our Board, we’ve now updated our member terms to include an obligation to follow published “member practices.” These practices will offer clearer guidance to members and give us the flexibility to act decisively in the rare situations where that becomes necessary.
To shape these practices, we’re convening a working group of Research Integrity experts from January to November 2026.
The group is a mix of research integrity experts and scholarly sleuths at publishers, institutions, funders and other community organizations.
Since January 2026, we’ve been working in consultation with the group to develop the member practices. From August to October 2026 we will be consulting with our members on a draft of these Member Practices. There are several ways in which you can provide your feedback on the draft:
