Federation partner
Crossref
Crossref schema 5.5 carries CRediT role assertions inside the contributor block of a deposit. This is the principal channel by which CRediT travels from publisher to researcher profile and downstream consumers.
What Crossref provides
Crossref is the largest DOI registration agency for scholarly works. When a publisher mints a DOI for a journal article, conference paper, book chapter, or preprint, it deposits a metadata record with Crossref. That record contains the authoritative bibliographic data: title, journal, dates, authors, affiliations, funders, references, and — since schema 5.5 — CRediT role assertions per contributor.
Downstream consumers (indexes, repositories, research information systems, citation tools, ORCID, government reporting pipelines) pull from Crossref. Anything that lands in the deposit propagates. Anything that does not, does not.
CRediT in schema 5.5
Schema 5.5 added support for the CRediT taxonomy inside the contributors element. Each contributor entry may carry one or more role children. Each role references a CRediT term by its identifier — preferably the canonical URI under casrai.org/credit/roles/. The role element supports a degree-of-contribution attribute taking lead, equal, or supporting, mirroring the values defined in ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022.
In practice a publisher's deposit XML now looks something like the contributor block sketched in the JATS and Crossref implementation guide. The pattern is stable; major publishers have implemented it and the Crossref schema documentation reflects the current production version.
Why Crossref matters
Crossref is the single most consequential point of leverage in the CRediT pipeline. Two reasons:
- Reach. Once a CRediT role is in a Crossref deposit, every downstream consumer who reads Crossref metadata sees it. There is no parallel pipeline to maintain.
- Round-trip to ORCID. Crossref pushes work updates to ORCID. A correctly populated CRediT field in the deposit becomes a CRediT field on the researcher's ORCID record automatically.
The implication for publishers is that the quality of the data they collect at submission directly determines the quality of the contribution record visible to funders, evaluators, and the researchers themselves. Submission forms that collect free-text role descriptions do not flow; submission forms that collect CRediT roles per ORCID iD do.
How CASRAI federates with Crossref
- The implementation guide shows worked Crossref deposit examples for CRediT-bearing publications.
- Cross-walks document the relationship between the Crossref
roleelement and equivalent structures in JATS, DataCite, and ORCID. - Where the Crossref schema changes, the relevant CASRAI pages are versioned and dated to track the change.
