Crossref is the organisation that issues persistent identifiers for academic digital content, known as digital object identifiers (DOIs). They do a great job at creating a unique link to content including journal articles and related files.
As announced earlier this year, Crossref are in the process of developing a schema specifically for preprints. That means that it will be much easier to differentiate a peer reviewed journal article from a preprint, especially while data mining. Preprints.org is looking forward to helping Crossref test the new service later this month, and implementing it for all our content (including papers already posted online) as soon as possible.
Preprints allows authors to update their articles after some time, and the Crossref schema will enable each version of a preprint to have a unique identifier containing all the relevant metadata, including the DOI of the published article when it becomes available.
DOIs are a great way to find and cite digital content and we are pleased that Crossref is welcoming preprints in to the Crossref family.
