1. Progress Report
on the
FundRef Initiative
H. Frederick Dylla
Executive Director and CEO
American Institute of Physics
CrossRef Annual General Meeting
November 14, 2012

2. FundRef
A collaborative pilot project of
scholarly publishers and funding
agencies, facilitated by CrossRef, to
provide a standard way of reporting
funding sources for published scholarly
research.
CrossRef Annual General Meeting
November 14, 2012

3. The Challenge
Currently there is no standard practice for
attributing published works to their funding
sources, making it difficult for all stakeholders
(funders, researchers, publishers, and the
public) to track or analyze published results.
A common solution, developed through
a unique collaboration, is emerging.
CrossRef Annual General Meeting
November 14, 20123

4. Stakeholder Benefits
 Funding agencies
◦ To easily identify and track published results of
funded research, i.e., improve accountability.
 Publishers
◦ To analyze funding sources of published
content through industry-wide practice(s)
 Researchers
◦ To simplify submission process across systems
CrossRef Annual General Meeting
November 14, 20124

5. Participants in Pilot Project
Publishers Funders
American Institute of Physics
US Department of Energy (DOE)
(AIP)
American Psychological
Association (APA) US National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA)
Elsevier Science
IEEE US National Science Foundation
Nature Publishing Group (NSF)
Oxford University Press Wellcome Trust
Wiley
CrossRef Annual General Meeting
November 14, 20125

6. Timetable for Pilot
March 2012 Project officially launched after CrossRef
Board approval
April - Dec Working Group and subgroups
define, develop, and assess pilot service
and workflow
Early 2013 To issue recommendations for path
forward
CrossRef Annual General Meeting
November 14, 20126

7. Goals of the FundRef Pilot
 To explore feasibility of publishers adding funder
metadata (standard funder name and grant number)
and depositing a set of test records to CrossRef and
CrossMark for access.
 To define requirements for a standard
nomenclature, i.e., a Funder Registry, for the capture
and display of funding sources.
 To demonstrate an industry-wide methodology for
connecting scholarly publications to research funders.
CrossRef Annual General Meeting
November 14, 20127

8. Pilot Progress to Date
 Elsevier’s SciVal funding body vocabulary of ~4,000
funder names made available for pilot project.
 Publishers added metadata (funder name and grant
number) to sets of test records for deposit to CrossRef.
 Publishers have begun working with manuscript
tracking system vendors to add funder data at
submission.
CrossRef Annual General Meeting
November 14, 20128

9. Pilot Progress to Date
(Continued)
 CrossRef added funder name and grant number as
part of regular CrossRef deposit with the option of
including data in CrossMark.
 CrossRef developed query API and will make
metadata available through normal channels.
 Soon, funders and other stakeholders will begin to
test use of the pilot data using the query API, e.g., to
find published results of research awards.
CrossRef Annual General Meeting
November 14, 20129

10. CrossRef Annual General Meeting
November 14, 2012

11. CrossRef Annual General Meeting
November 14, 2012

12. More About FundRef
 Handout available; includes the FundRef Workflow.
(first distributed at October’s Frankfurt Book Fair and STM
Meeting.)
 Pilot to run through beginning of 2013; more
information to come.
 For updates, go to http://tinyurl.com/fundref
 See CrossRef project page at:
www.crossref.org/fundref
CrossRef Annual General Meeting
12
November 14, 2012

13. FundRef
Acknowledgements: H. Frederick Dylla
Ed Pentz, Geoff Bilder, CrossRef Executive Director and CEO
Sharon Jordan, CrossRef Consultant American Institute of Physics
dylla@aip.org
CrossRef Annual General Meeting
13
November 14, 2012