Fees

Our membership fees for non-funders are tiered depending on the publishing revenue or expenses of your organization. Please select your tier from the table below, and use the higher number of either:

1. Total annual publishing revenue from all the divisions of your organization (the member is considered to be the largest legal entity) for all types of activities (advertising, sales, subscriptions, databases, article charges, membership dues, etc). Or, if no publishing revenue then:
2. Total annual publishing operations expenses including (but not limited to) staff costs, hosting, outsourcing, consulting, typesetting, etc.

Since 2019, funders are able to register DOIs for the research grants they have awarded. Their annual membership fees are lower than for all other members, but their grant registration fees are higher. Funder fees are tiered depending on your annual award value.

Content Registration (metadata deposit) fees are one-time fees for the initial registration of content with us. There are no fees for updating the metadata for registered content. These fees are usually billed quarterly in arrears. We accept the following content:

• Journals and journal articles
• Books, book chapters, and reference works
• Conference proceedings and papers
• Preprints
• Peer Reviews
• Standards
• Technical reports and working papers
• Theses and dissertations
• Components (sub-items of journal, book, or conference content, such as figures, tables, graphs, data)
• Datasets and database entries
• Funding grants (including awards and use of facilities/equipment)

There are different fees for different content types and some fees are different depending on the publication date of the content. Content types indicated with a * have volume discounts available - the fees in the table give the starting point for the volume discounts, and later tables give more detail.

Note: “Current” content includes the current calendar year + the previous two calendar years (so for content registered in 2021 this is those with publication/award dates of 2021, 2020, 2019). “Backfile” is for anything earlier than that (so in 2021, that will be content published/awarded in 2018 or before).

If you register multiple peer reviews for the same article, then volume discounts apply. The prices and discounts are different depending on whether you are the publisher of the article being reviewed.

Volume discounts don’t apply across reviews for different articles.

Registered by title publisher

Registered by not the title publisher

If you’re depositing a lot of chapters or reference works for the same title in the same quarter year, the following discounts apply:

The higher tiers are for encyclopaedias, in case you’re wondering how a single title could possibly have 100,000 chapters!

If you’re registering a lot of components or datasets for a single title in the same quarter year, the following discounts apply. There is no difference in price between current and backfile content for datasets and components.

Members of Crossref can participate in Similarity Check. The service fee is 20% of your annual membership fee and is included in your annual membership fee invoice.

Each document run through Similarity Check is charged at a per-document-checking fee, and there are volume discounts. There is a separate invoice for Similarity Check document checking fees.

If you want to get and use our metadata, you don’t need to be a Crossref member. We have various free public APIs available that you can use without contacting us. We also offer the Metadata Plus service for an annual subscription fee. You’ll receive an annual fee for this service each January - but if you initially sign up during the year, your fees will be prorated for the remainder of that calendar year.

The Metadata Plus service offers combined machine access to all available metadata in XML and JSON formats with additional features. This is also available openly via our Public APIs. The Plus service offers extra guarantees and features.

Please select your tier from the table below, using one of the following criteria:

1. For commercial organizations, the subscriber is considered to be the largest legal entity. The fee tier is selected based on the total annual revenue of all the divisions of your organization for all activities.
2. For government agencies, universities, and not-for-profits, the subscriber is considered to be the agency or department applying for the service. The fee tier is selected based on whichever is the higher between your total annual income, if any, or alternatively the total annual funding received.

You don’t have to tell us your total revenue/income/funding, just the category you are in. Let us know if you’re not sure.

If you’re an organization who works on behalf of groups of smaller organizations that want to register content with Crossref, you’ll be set up as a Sponsoring Organization. Sponsors work directly with us in order to provide administrative, technical and—if applicable—language support to the communities they work with.

The annual membership fee you pay as a Sponsor is based on the total annual publications revenue, income or funding of all the organizations you support, whichever is higher.

Each quarter you will also be sent an invoice for any content items that have been registered by the organizations that you sponsor. The charges are listed by each organization’s prefix on the invoice. There are different fees for different content types and the fees are also different depending on the publication date of the content. You will be asked to recategorize your annual fee at the end of every year, as the number of sponsoring members you represent grows.

Service providers such as hosting platforms pay an annual flat fee of USD 2,000.00.

We usually send out invoices by email to your named billing contact. The email will include full payment details including account numbers, but here are the basic payment methods. Please note we can only accept payment in US dollars.

1. Credit card payments are made via our payment portal. If you don’t already have a username and password for our payment portal, please contact billing@crossref.org. Please note: your username and password for the payment portal is different from the username and password you use to register your content with us.
2. Bank transfers/wires and Automated Clearing House (ACH) - please add USD 35 for wire transfer fee.
3. Checks from banks - we prefer checks drawn on US banks. If you are sending payment from a USD bank account outside the US, please add USD 50 to your payment to cover processing fees. Please mail checks, with a copy of the invoice or with the invoice number referenced on the check, to: Crossref, PO BOX 719, Lynnfield, MA 01940.

If you have not been receiving invoices, please contact us to update the email address for your account. We recommend you give us a generic departmental email address such as accounts@company.org to avoid emails bouncing back from the accounts of colleagues who have left your organization. Thank you!