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Latest blog posts
2026 April 23
Why metadata matters for research integrity: a new joint guide from Crossref and DataCite
Preserving the integrity of the scholarly record is an important component of the overall endeavour to protect research integrity. Open scholarly infrastructure enables persistent recording of research objects and associated metadata, which provides an evidence trail for these objects for all in the research community.
Crossref
and
DataCite
– as providers of essential infrastructure for preservation of the scholarly record – we share our joint expertise in the new guide on “Why metadata matters for research integrity and how to contribute”.
...Find out more
2026 April 13
Strengthening community connections in São Paulo
Versão em português
As our global community continues to grow, it is important for us to build and maintain our connections within it. In March this year, we had the opportunity to visit São Paulo for a community event at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas. The content of our presentations is
available online
. Events such as this provide an opportunity for us to update our members on Crossref fundamentals and developments, and help us better tune in to the varied needs of our communities and learn how we can work together more effectively. This was our third visit to Brazil, with previous events held in Campinas and São Paulo in 2016, and Goiânia and Fortaleza in 2018.
...Find out more
2026 April 01
Reflections from Bangkok
Each organization in the global community of Crossref members (that’s currently over 24k organizations in 166 different countries) plays a key role in building the Research Nexus. Any opportunity we have to meet with our members in person is a highlight and a way for us to learn more from each other. The month of January saw three of us travel to Bangkok to attend the first-ever Charleston Conference organised in Asia and to meet with our growing community in Thailand.
...Find out more
2026 March 31
Voices from Crossref Metadata Sprint in São Paulo
This year, we placed a spotlight on the Latin American community, hosting the second Crossref Metadata Sprint in São Paulo, Brazil from 4 - 6 March 2026. In our first tri-lingual event, we brought together 31 participants from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico. Our goal was to foster community co-creation using the open scholarly metadata. The Sprint was an opportunity to pose questions, share ideas, collaborate on research, and propose innovative solutions that enhance the use of metadata in scholarly communication and beyond.
Read on for more details about the content of the Sprint, and the resulting projects. You can also
register to join our Sprint Showcase
call on 22nd April to hear directly from the team about their creations.
...Find out more
Find a service
Open Funder Registry (OFR)
The Open Funder Registry (OFR, formerly FundRef) and associated funding metadata allows everyone to have transparency into research funding and its outcomes. It’s an open and unique registry of persistent identifiers for grant-giving organisations around the world.
It is good practice for authors to acknowledge support for and contributions to their research in their published articles. This support may be financial, such as a grant or salary award; or practical, such as the use or loan of specialist facilities and equipment. They do this by listing the funding agency and the grant number somewhere in their article - usually the first or last page, or in the acknowledgments or footnotes section. Members contribute by depositing the funding acknowledgements from their publications as part of their standard metadata, together with the unique funder IDs listed in the OFR. The deposit should include funder names, funder IDs, and associated grant numbers.
This means that anyone can make connections, for example, to identify which funders invest in certain fields of research. Funding data is also used by funders to track the publications that result from their grants.
The Crossref OFR is an open registry of grant-giving organisation names and identifiers, which you use to find funder IDs and include them as part of your metadata deposits. It is a
freely-downloadable RDF file
. It is
CC0-licensed
and available to integrate with your own systems. Funder names from acknowledgements should be matched with the corresponding unique funder ID from the registry.
You can search funding metadata manually using our
funding data search
, or programmatically via our
REST API
. This data not only clarifies the scholarly record, but makes life easier for researchers who may need to comply with requirements to make their published results publicly available.
Watch the introductory Open Funder Registry animation in your language:
한국어
Japanese
Chinese
Bahasa Indonesia
العربية
Português do Brasil
Benefits of the Open Funder Registry
There are many benefits of clear, transparent, and measurable information on who funded research, and where it has been published. The OFR facilitates accurate funding metadata, which in turn enables multiple parties to better understand the research funding landscape:
Readers and researchers can read and assess literature in the context of knowing who funded it;
Research institutions can monitor the published outputs of their researchers;
Publishers can track who is funding their authors, and check if they’re meeting funding mandates;
Service providers can offer integrated time-saving features to their users; and
Funders can easily track the reach and return of the work they have supported.
How the Open Funder Registry works
Authors acknowledge the funding sources for their research in their publications. Using the registry, members can
find the unique IDs for these funders, standardize this metadata and send it to us
The registry is donated by Elsevier, and is updated around every 4-6 weeks with new and updated funder records. Existing entries are also reviewed to make sure that they are accurate and up-to-date. We can then make it openly available through our
funding data search
and our
API
. If you spot anything that doesn’t look right, please
let us know
. You can also
download a .csv file
of the latest registry.
Using the OFR, members can find the unique IDs for these funders, standardize this metadata to send it to us.
Obligations and fees for the Open Funder Registry
The OFR is open to everyone. There are no fees for members depositing funding data.
Open Funder Registry search
and our
API
are also freely available.
Members must include the OFR ID for each funder if it is present in the Registry. If a funder is not in the Registry and does not have an ID, include the name of the funder.
How to participate in the Open Funder Registry
To access the OFR, you do not need to be a member, but you need to be a member to include OFR IDs in your Crossref metadata. Anyone who’s interested can simply enter an organisation’s name into the
Open Funder Registry search
to view content connected to funding sources. The metadata in the registry is also openly available via our API, and as a downloadable RDF file. Learn more about
accessing the OFR
Depositing metadata
(members): collect funder names and grant numbers from your authors through your manuscript tracking system (or extract them from acknowledgements sections) and match them with the corresponding Funder IDs from the registry. Once this is done, it’s easy to add these three additional pieces of metadata - funder name, funder id, and grant number - as additional metadata in the regular Crossref content registration service. Learn more about
how to collect and register funding data
Whenever you register content with us, make sure you include funder names and grant numbers in the submission:
If you are using a content registration helper tool - the
Crossref XML plugin for OJS
, the
web deposit form
, or the
new Metadata Manager tool
- simply enter funder names and grant numbers in the relevant fields. For OJS, you must be running at least OJS 3.1.2 and have the
Crossref funding plugin
enabled.
If you’re depositing XML with Crossref, include your funding data in your XML.
Retrieving metadata:
you can view the content that has cited a particular funding source by entering the organisation’s name into the
Open Funder Registry search
. If you prefer a machine-readable query, use our
REST API
. If you have questions about how your organisation appears in the registry then please
get in touch
. Learn more about the OFR and our other services on our
funder community page
Download the Open Funder Registry factsheet
, and explore
factsheets for other Crossref services and in different languages
Getting started with Open Funder Registry (OFR)
Learn more about the
Open Funder Registry (OFR) in our documentation
Page maintainer: Lena Stoll