What is our role in preserving the integrity of the scholarly record? - Crossref

"To address the question of our role in the integrity of the scholarly record, we need to understand several aspects that Crossref has to balance in this capacity, such as We don’t have the means or desire to be the arbiter of research quality. However, we operate neutrally, at the centre of scholarly communications, and we can help develop a shared consensus or framework. Our metadata elements and tools can be positioned to signal or detect trustworthiness. An important distinction is that we can play a role in assessing legitimacy but not in assessing quality. We must be cautious that our best practices for demonstrating legitimacy and handling less-than-legitimate behaviour do not raise already-high barriers for emerging publications or organisations that present in ways that some may not recognise as professional standards. Disruption is different from deception. In discussions with our board this point has come out strongly: that Crossref has an opportunity to think about how to help the community identify deceptive actions and pair that with our efforts to bring more people on board. Addressing this issue may involve changes to our membership eligibility and processes, bylaws, policies, staff resources, and technical and metadata solutions; actually, a combination of all these aspects. Many of these are projects that are already planned and we have ideas for extending these. We regularly review the process we use for evaluating when and why to revoke membership for reasons other than non-payment. The volume of cases that we believe justify membership revocation—while a tiny fraction of members—is growing and does take staff and legal resources to address...."