As we mark the five-year milestone of Crossref’s Grant IDs, it’s clear that this initiative has primarily benefited funders by enhancing the visibility and traceability of research funding. However, publishers should take note of how the Grant Linking System (GLS) can also streamline our workflows and improve the quality of our published content.
The blog post from Crossref highlights various achievements and use cases, including a notable example from the publisher eLife. Here’s an excerpt that demonstrates the publisher-side use case around the GLS:
“Fred Atherden, Head of Production Operations at eLife, presented how they include Crossref grant identifiers in publication metadata for the version of record of the works published on their platform. eLife is the first publisher to fully integrate Crossref grant identifiers both within the article display and in the metadata. Fred shared that in addition to collecting the data from the authors, eLife also attempts matching, albeit using very restrictive methodology, to enable more grant metadata in their publication records. They recognise that so far there are very few publishers including persistent links for grants in this way, and talked about plans to start collecting and including this data further upstream, and including them in the future for reviewed preprints.”
For publishers, integrating grant identifiers can offer a couple of advantages:
- Ensuring that funding information is correctly reported helps maintain the integrity of our publications.
- Clear linkage between grants and research outputs fosters trust and credibility.
- Matching/automated linking, where possible, reduces the manual workload for editorial teams.
- With accurate funding data, we can demonstrate the impact of funding on published research.
We encourage all publishers to explore the Crossref grant identifiers and consider how they can be incorporated into your publication processes. By doing so, we support the broader research ecosystem and enhance the value and impact of our publications.
For more details on the five-year journey of the Crossref Grant IDs, you can read the full blog post here.