Can Publishers Help Fix CrossRef Affiliations Metadata Issues?

Metadata Retrieval
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Can Publishers Help Fix CrossRef Metadata Issues?

We make extensive use of the CrossRef API to collect metadata for articles from researchers in our research organization. Unfortunately, the metadata is not always complete and/or correct. Is there any way CrossRef could contact journal publishers to ask them to improve the metadata submitted ?

The comma is missing before the country in the Wiley affiliations. This comma appears correctly on their website but not in the CrossRef metadata.

Example: api crossref org/works/10.1002/alz.71007

→ “affiliation”: [{“name”: “Department of Epidemiology and Prevention Wake Forest University School of Medicine Winston-Salem North Carolina USA”}]

Nature and Elsevier do not transmit the affiliation field:

Example: api crossref org/works/10.1016/j.jns.2025.123919
→ “affiliation”: [ ]

Example: api crossref org/works/10.1007/s00344-026-12180-5
→ “affiliation”: [ ]

Oxford stores the author’s email address at the end of the affiliation field:
Example: api crossref org/works/10.1093/icc/dtaf058

→ affiliation": [{“name”: “Economic Geography Group, Department of Geography, LMU Munich, Luisenstraße 37, 80333 Munich, . e-mail: johannes glueckler lmu de”,…

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Dear Frederick,

Thank you for contacting Crossref Support.

All DOI metadata is provided to us by our publisher members. Crossref does not update, edit, or correct publisher-provided metadata directly.

To assist, we’ve contacted the publishers in question and passed along the information you shared with us. Please note, however, that while affiliation metadata is recommended, it is not required, and some publishers choose not to include it in their deposits.

If you’d like to discuss these practices in more detail, we suggest reaching out to the publishers directly.

Best regards,
Crossref Support