crossref.org

Crossref

Who runs Crossref, what it tracks and what it costs, and the 20 closest scholarly metadata infrastructure alternatives.

Who’s behind it
Not stated
Online since
Unknown
Trackers
Prices
No pricing page
Last price change
–
Closest alternative
DataCite

Measured from Crossref’s own pages, the Internet Archive and public records. Hover a dotted value for its source and date.

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Visit Crossref

01 · Who’s behind it

Who runs Crossref

Crossref crossref.org

Crossref is open infrastructure linking the world's research. 26,500 members, 171 countries, 2.1 billion monthly API queries.

Wikidata: one of the official Digital Object Identifier Registration Agencies of the International DOI Foundation

Company
No imprint we could read
Online since
Not in the Internet Archive
Audience
In English

02 · Privacy

What Crossref tracks

What the homepage loads before you accept or decline cookies. A cookie banner should hold most of it back until you agree, and a tag manager can load more that we don’t see.

tracker that follows visitors

8 of the 19 alternatives below have fewer, 5 have more.

Privacy-friendly alternatives →
Cookie banner
None found
  • Visitor analytics

    Counts and follows visits, usually with cookies.

03 · Alternatives

Alternatives to Crossref

Thumbs up if it’s a real alternative to Crossref, thumbs down if it isn’t.

Fewer trackers than CrossrefNo ad trackersRegistered in the EUFree planOnly in English

20 of the 60 sites closest to Crossref match.

  1. 01
    DataCite datacite.org English No trackers

    DataCite – Connecting Research, Advancing Knowledge - DataCite

    international not-for-profit organization which aims to improve data citation

    Compare DataCite with Crossref →
  2. 02
    ORCID orcid.org Top 10K English No trackers

    ORCID

    non-profit organization that issues ORCID Identifiers

    Compare ORCID with Crossref →
  3. 03
    DOI.org query endpoint doi.org Top 1K English No trackers

    Home Page

    API endpoint

    Compare DOI.org query endpoint with Crossref →
  4. 04
    OpenAlex openalex.org English No trackers

    OpenAlex: The open catalog to the global research system

    OpenAlex indexes half a billion scholarly works, with their authors, institutions, sources and topics, and makes them free to search, analyze and reuse through our web app, API and bulk download.

    Compare OpenAlex with Crossref →
  5. 05
    ICANN icann.org Top 10K English No trackers

    Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

    ICANN’s mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet.

    Compare ICANN with Crossref →
  6. 06
    w3id.org English No trackers

    w3id.org - Permanent Identifiers for the Web

    Secure, permanent URLs for your Web application that will stand the test of time.

    Compare w3id.org with Crossref →
  7. 07
    inria.fr Top 10K English No trackers

    Making sure you're not a bot!

    French research institution in computer science

    Compare inria.fr with Crossref →
  8. 08
    OCLC oclc.org Top 10K English No trackers

    global library cooperative

    Compare OCLC with Crossref →
  9. 09
    OpenStack openstack.org English No trackers

    Open Source Cloud Computing Infrastructure - OpenStack

    Deployed by thousands. Proven production at scale. OpenStack is a set of software components that provide common services for cloud infrastructure.

    Compare OpenStack with Crossref →
  10. 10
    Liberapay liberapay.com English No trackers

    Liberapay

    We help you fund the creators and projects you appreciate.

    Compare Liberapay with Crossref →
  11. 11
    Internet Archive archive.org Top 1K English No trackers

    Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

    U.S. non-profit organization and digital archive

    Compare Internet Archive with Crossref →
  12. 12
    ClinicalTrials.gov clinicaltrials.gov Top 10K English No trackers

    ClinicalTrials.gov

    United States government registry of clinical trials

    Compare ClinicalTrials.gov with Crossref →
  13. 13
    United States Patent and Trademark Office uspto.gov Top 10K English No trackers

    United States Patent and Trademark Office

    Home page of the United States Patent and Trademark Office's main web site.

    Compare United States Patent and Trademark Office with Crossref →
  14. 14
    Grants.gov grants.gov English No trackers

    Home | Grants.gov

    USA federal website

    Compare Grants.gov with Crossref →
  15. 15
    SURF surf.nl English No trackers

    SURF is the collaborative organisation for IT in Dutch education and research | SURF.nl

    More than 100 education and research institutions in the Netherlands work together in the SURF cooperative to fully utilise the opportunities of digitalisation. Our goal: improved and more flexible education and research.

    Compare SURF with Crossref →
  16. 16
    DFN dfn.de Top 10K English No trackers

    Home - DFN

    German association for academic research

    Compare DFN with Crossref →
  17. 17
    Privacy Guides privacyguides.org English No trackers

    Privacy Guides

    Established in 2021, Privacy Guides is the largest impartial, non-profit media outlet focused on finding privacy tools and learning about protecting your digital life.

    Compare Privacy Guides with Crossref →
  18. 18
    Fight for the Future fightforthefuture.org English No trackers

    Fight for the Future

    Who are we? We are a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology is a force for liberation— not oppression. Battle […]

    Compare Fight for the Future with Crossref →
  19. 19
    Wikimedia wikimedia.org Top 1K English No trackers

    Wikimedia

    The Wikimedia movement is a global community of people, projects, and activities working together to create and share knowledge freely.

    Compare Wikimedia with Crossref →
  20. 20
    Observation.org observation.org English No trackers

    Checking if you are not a bot

    Biodiversity Citizen Science & Monitoring

    Compare Observation.org with Crossref →

Closest first, by how much each site’s offer resembles Crossref’s. Trackers are counted the same way as above. Highlighted technologies are ones Crossref uses too. Votes and comments come from visitors and don’t change the order.

04 · History

No changes yet. Each new crawl is compared with the last one, and what Crossref adds, drops or rewrites shows up here.

05 · Details

How we measure

Alternatives are matched by what sites actually offer, from their homepages, Wikidata and a summary by Claude, in any language. Trackers and the rest of the stack come from the homepage’s code and DNS records.

The full technology stack, the competitor map and search numbers · 14 technologies
Neighbours
k = 60
Sites searched
9,216
Vector
384-d
Query
33 ms

Competitor map

Each alternative by how close its vector is to Crossref’s (x) and how much traffic it gets, how much of the stack it shares, or where it sits in the embedding space itself (y). Hover for the numbers, click to jump to it in the list.

similarity × popularity

DFNClinicalTrials.govInternet ArchiveLiberapayinria.frICANNOpenAlexDOI.org query endpointORCIDDataCite

Built with

JavaScript libraries
  • jQuery asset https://www.crossref.org/js/jquery.min.js
CSS & UI
  • Bootstrap asset https://www.crossref.org/js/bootstrap.min.js
  • Font Awesome asset https://www.crossref.org/fontawesome/css/all.min.css
Analytics
  • Matomo page source: _paq.push(
Live chat & support
  • Zendesk TXT v=spf1 ip4:208.254.38.64/27 ip4:108.26.163.24 ip4:18.233.120.246 incl…
CDN
  • Amazon CloudFront header x-amz-cf-id: BkAXA8mwE1DbolpDB6-t6MH7TzUR_cuK7i0BW7hPk6nWQXliHw5Fgg==
  • cdnjs asset https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/masonry/4.1.0/masonry.pkgd.js
  • jsDelivr asset https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/algoliasearch/3/algoliasearch.min.js
Hosting
Site search
  • Algolia page source: algoliasearch
Email hosting
Email delivery
  • Amazon SES TXT v=spf1 ip4:208.254.38.64/27 ip4:108.26.163.24 ip4:18.233.120.246 incl…
DNS hosting