What Smart Scholars does
We make a journal's Crossref records complete and keep them true: DOIs registered from what the journal already has, every element of the record put right and read back, the articles preserved, and the journal judged on the public record.
Crossref Service Provider (Basic), accredited from 1 October 2026
What we put right in a Crossref record
The elements Crossref's own participation reports measure for every member. Measure any journal, DOI prefix or member free: Metadata completeness score.
References
Each article's reference list in its Crossref record, every reference matched to its DOI where it has one — what feeds Cited-by, OpenAlex and every citation count.
Abstracts
The abstract in the record — read from the article, approved by the journal, deposited; in every language the article has one, with its italics, superscripts and subscripts kept, and kept by every repair.
ORCID iDs
Each author's ORCID iD, as the paper prints it or the journal's records hold it, put on the record.
Contributor roles (CRediT)
What each author did, in the fourteen CRediT roles — read from the paper's "Author contributions" statement or its JATS file, confirmed by the journal, carried on each author.
Article numbers
For journals that number their articles instead of pages (e1042): the article number on the record — and kept by every repair.
Supplements and special issues
The issue's special numbering (Suppl 1) on the record, so a supplement is never taken for the regular issue.
Participation Report preview
Before a repair is approved: what Crossref's Participation Report for the journal reads today, and what it will read once the repair is accepted, element by element.
Affiliations
Each author's institution as the record's own field, so the institution gets the credit.
ROR IDs
The institution's ROR ID beside its name — only a confident match from ROR's own service, never a guess.
Funder IDs and award numbers
The funder, by its Funder Registry or ROR ID, and the grant number — declared by the journal per article, or added in bulk to DOIs already registered.
Crossmark
Corrections and retractions declared and sent at once; AI-use and data-availability statements — for journals with a Crossmark policy.
Clinical trial numbers
A trial's registration number on the record, under its registry's Crossref DOI — found in the article's text and confirmed by the journal.
Licence URLs
The journal's licence on every record — the mark of open access that DOAJ and Unpaywall read; "free to read" said only beside an open licence.
Similarity Check URLs
The full-text link Crossref's Similarity Check reads, so new manuscripts can be compared with the journal's articles.
A DOI that resolves
Every DOI tested at doi.org; a dead link replaced by the article's current page, read back from Crossref after every fix.
New: Smart Deposit
A new DOI from what the journal already has — on DOI Doctor.
- From what the journal already has — the article's PDF or Word file, its web page, the JATS or NLM XML from the typesetter, or a spreadsheet of many articles.
- Every value shown with where it was read and how sure the reading is; the editor checks it and confirms it.
- The language of the article, and of each title and abstract, read from the text itself — Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Sanskrit, Bengali, Assamese, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia, Urdu and more — so titles and abstracts in the article's own language reach Crossref with their language named.
- Authors' institutions matched to ROR IDs; ORCID iDs printed in the paper put beside their names; clinical trial numbers found in the text.
- Each author's CRediT roles read from the paper's "Author contributions" statement or the JATS file; the article number and the supplement read from the JATS file or the spreadsheet; the abstract's formatting kept.
- A field of science suggested for every article (OECD's Fields of Science and Technology), kept on the article's record at Smart Scholars — Crossref's article record has no field for it.
- What no file states, an AI model may suggest — always marked as a suggestion, and deposited only after a person has confirmed it.
- Checked against Crossref's own schema before it goes; followed to Crossref's verdict and to doi.org, and preserved.
- For DOIs already registered: funding, licences, full-text and Similarity Check links added in bulk from Crossref's own CSV templates — each record read first, nothing on it taken off.
What we register
Journals
Journal articles · Journal titles · Pending publications · Peer reviews · Preprints & posted content
Books & conferences
Books · Book chapters · Book series · Book sets · Conference proceedings · Proceedings series · Conference papers
Other research output
Theses & dissertations · Reports & working papers · Report series · Standards · Databases · Datasets · Figures, tables & supplements
Funding
Grants & funding awards
For journals & publishers
Start with the audit — it is free, and it is the gate to everything else.
What Crossref holds about you
Your own public record, read back in under a minute — no account needed.
Metadata completeness score
One score for any journal, DOI prefix or Crossref member, beside large publishers — free, no account.
Journal Audit — free readiness audit
121 criteria: identity, governance, ethics, access, technical, content.
Fix list & re-audit
A plain list an editor can hand to the OJS host.
GetIndexed — indexing applications
An 8-stage ladder from ISSN and DOIs to the selective indexes.
Index directory (153 databases)
What each database wants, before you apply.
Open-access books: DOAB and OAPEN
For publishers of peer-reviewed open-access books.
Reference Booster
Reference lists read from the PDFs, matched to DOIs, written into OJS and Crossref.
Citation Check
What stops citations, article by article — proof, path and meaning.
Never cited
Every zero-citation article checked in the open citation sources.
Digital archives
Every PDF mirrored to the Internet Archive, Zenodo and the Wayback Machine.
Article formatting
A manuscript typeset to the journal template, with galleys.
DOI care
Every service on one journal profile — each previews first and acts only on your approval.
DOI Doctor — check & repair
Every DOI tested at doi.org and Crossref; dead links, abstracts, licences, ORCIDs.
Smart Deposit
A new DOI from your PDF, Word file, article page, JATS XML or spreadsheet — every value shown with its source, deposited once you confirm it.
DOI census (Excel)
Site against Crossref, both directions, with a copy-paste fix per article.
Backfile DOIs
DOIs for older articles that never had one — no per-DOI fee of ours.
Write DOIs into OJS
The verified DOIs pushed onto your article pages through your own API.
Silent-failure monitor
Weekly checks of site, OAI-PMH, Scholar tags, ISSN, preservation, hijack lists.
Verified metrics & badges
A public, dated, source-linked metrics page and a "cited by" badge.
Quality dossier (PDF)
One PDF for universities, authors and reviewers.
Author citation engine
The citation steps emailed to each author from the journal's own mailbox.
JATS XML
Machine-readable JATS per article.
Duplicate articles
The same paper published twice — you choose which copy stays.
For authors & researchers
Free to use. Nothing you check is shared with the journal.
Scholar Shield
Is this journal safe to publish in?.
Journal Check
One journal, checked against the public record.
Journal Risk Radar
An early-warning score 0–100: the behaviour that precedes delisting, hijacking and retractions.
Manuscript Screen
AI-writing, paper-mill, reference and image signals with the evidence — before you submit.
ScholaRef — reference check
Your reference list checked for retractions and dead DOIs.
My record
Your own publications, gathered and kept current.
Visibility
Where your work is findable, and where it is not.
Alerts
Told when something changes about a journal you published in.
Certificate & passport
A dated record you can attach to an application.
For institutions, sponsors & DOI operators
Research Integrity Desk
For universities, funders and government.
Evaluate a journal
One journal, with the method shown.
Methodology
Exactly how every figure is arrived at.
Watchlist
The journals your people are publishing in.
Research Integrity OS
Faculty vault, policy engine, compliance desk, QR-verified reports.
Risk radar for institutions
Every journal in your vault re-scored weekly, with alerts on the journals you watch.
Pre-submission screening
Manuscripts screened for AI-writing, paper-mill, reference and image signals before they go out.
Portfolio Console
For sponsors, hosts and societies — many journals at once.
DOI Members
The repair layer for DOI operators.
Journals hub
COPE, CRediT, robust links, readiness and rating in one place.
Screening desk for editors
Submissions, your recent output as the record shows it, and reviewer reports that look alike.
How we work
Every service shows what it will do before it does it, and acts only on the journal's approval. After every deposit the record is read back from Crossref, so a change is reported only when Crossref holds it. Every figure on our pages opens the rows behind it. How we work & policies · Trust and security · Services and pricing · Contact us
