Although metadata records may be submitted to Crossref in any language/script, historically our administrative systems have had technical limitations about where characters beyond a standard unaccented Latin alphabet could be used. What this means is that fields with characters like ë or ṥ or ĝ were replaced with e or s or g, which has had the unfortunate effect of leaving some of our members with an account name that doesn’t accurately reflect their organization’s actual name.
The good news is that we are now equipped to include these characters in more fields in our internal systems! Here’s a breakdown of where you can include these characters, and which ones can be used where.
Account name
What is it? This is your organization’s name in our internal systems, but it also becomes a public-facing identity too. It appears within the metadata of any DOIs you register in the <publisher> field (see below), and it is also the name that appears on your invoices if you are an independent member.
Which characters can it include? Account names can include all Latin characters, including accented characters. Due to system limitations, they cannot include characters in non-Latin scripts, but they may be in English or any other language with a Latin orthography. For example, the organization “Scientific Institute for Veterinary Medicine of Serbia” could use that name for their account or “Naučni institut za veterinarstvo Srbije”, but not “Научни институт за ветеринарство Србије”. For independent members, your account name in our system can be no longer than 100 characters.
Addresses
What are they? We ask all members when they apply for a mailing/postal address; we also ask independent members for a billing address. These addresses may be the same or different, but don’t worry, we won’t actually send any physical mail to you! Your address(es) will appear on invoices sent to you if you are an independent member. Addresses also help us track how many of our members operate in a given country.
Which characters can they include? Addresses are the sole field in our system that can only handle standard, unaccented Latin characters - they should not include other characters.
Billing extra information
What is it? When independent members apply to join Crossref, there is a little space to add extra information to their membership orders/invoices that may be required for their billing purposes. This frequently includes things like VAT numbers, email addresses, notes that an invoice is to be paid by a particular department/faculty/person, or purchase order numbers.
Which characters can it include? There are no limits to the characters that can appear in the billing extra information field!
Contact names
What are they? Each Crossref membership has several contact roles: Primary and Voting contacts (for all members), plus Technical, Metadata Quality, and Billing contacts (for independent members only). For each contact role, we seek a name and email address.
Which characters can they include? Contact names can include both accented and standard Latin characters, but not non-Latin characters.
Metadata/DOI records
What are they? Metadata are the details members submit with each DOI record they deposit, including titles, author names, abstracts, and more.
Which characters can they include? Metadata records may be submitted in any language/script. The suffixes of the DOIs themselves can only include unaccented Latin characters, numerals 0-9, and the following marks: - . _ ; ( ) / (Sorry, no emoji in your DOIs 
)
One final note: if your Crossref membership was set up more than a few years ago, we may have had to remove accented characters from your account or contact names due to historic system limitations. You can double-check your account name in our Participation Reports tool if you are unsure exactly how it appears.
If your account name is incorrect, please get in touch with us to request an update and we’ll be happy to fix that for you.