Hi - I’m Robbykha, and I’m one of the Member Support Specialists at Crossref. I spend a lot of my time helping organizations to join Crossref and start registering their content. This month, we got many requests from our members that they couldn’t log into their accounts in order to register their content. You may have gotten a notification reading “Wrong credentials. Incorrect username or password” in our system, when you tried to log into our admin console. If you forget your password or if you can’t log into the admin console, here’s what to do.
After you apply for membership, we set you up with the Crossref account credentials that you will use to access our systems and register your content. There are two different styles of account credentials - there are “user credentials”, where individual people at a member organization have a different and personal set of credentials, or there are “role credentials”, where there’s just one set of credentials that’s shared across the whole organization.
We set up the right style of Crossref account credentials for you based on the content registration tool you plan to use, and whether you joined Crossref through a sponsor or not. For example: if you are an independent member and you will be using the Crossref XML plugin for OJS, OMP or WordPress, we will set up user credentials for you. If you are using all other platforms, we will be giving you role credentials.
Here’s the example of what credentials that you are required to put when you register the content with us. If you are using shared role credentials, you can add in your shared username and password. If you are using personal user credentials that are unique to you, you will need to add your email address and your personal password into the password field. If you are using Crossref XML plugin for OJS you need to put your email address and the role in the username field.
If you use Web deposit form
If you use admin tool
If you use OJS Plugin
You need to put your email address and role in the username section.
Username: email@address.com/role
Therefore, before we may assist you further on resetting your password, we usually check your details as listed below:
- your member type (independent or sponsored)
- your account’s registered contacts: only registered contact can request to reset your password. Otherwise, if you are a new person at your organization, we require authorization from the registered contact first.
- your credentials model (role credentials or user credentials)
How to reset my password if I join Crossref through a Sponsor?
If you join Crossref through a Sponsoring Organization, usually we set up a single set of shared role credentials to access our tools and services for your new membership. After we set up your account, we will send your account credential details to your Sponsor. Then your Sponsor will set the password, and may share these details with you. If you forget your password as a Sponsored Member, you are not able to reset your own password. You need to contact your Sponsoring Organization who will be able to provide or reset your password for you. The exception to this is sponsored members who are sponsored by Public Knowledge Project (PKP) - if you are a PKP-sponsored member then you will be set up with email-based user credentials and you will be able to reset your own personal password by visiting our admin tool.
How to reset my password if I join Crossref as an Independent member?
This depends on whether you are using those unique, email-based user credentials, or a set of shared role credentials. If you use role credentials, you need to reset the password by contacting us. Please note that Crossref staff are not able to view or share the password, but we will send you an email where you can reset the password.
If your account is set up with email-based user credentials, you can reset your own password through our admin console. If you click on the “Forgotten your password?” link you’ll be able to request a password reset link by adding in your registered email address.
What exactly happens when I request a new password?
If you are using user credentials, you will request a new password via the admin tool. If you are using role credentials, you have to contact us to request a password change.
Either way, what happens next is that you will receive an email with a link where you can reset your password. The email will come from the email address noreply@crossref.org, and will have the subject line “Your Crossref password”. This link is active for four days, and can be used once.
How to reset my password if the link from noreply@crossref.org has expired?
Please do not worry.
If you are using user credentials, you can just go back to the admin tool and request another password reset email.
If you are using role credentials, you will need to contact us so we can send you a new email with a new link.
Why couldn’t I receive the noreply@crossref.org email?
It may be that your email client has identified our message as spam. To stop this, please add noreply@crossref.orginto your contacts list. Depending on your email client you may also have the option of adding noreply@crossref.org to a safe senders list - please do check which options your email client has.
What do I do if I forgot my password and the email address, or if my previous email address is no longer active?
When your email address has changed, obviously, you can’t log in to access our tools and services. You can request to update your email address by completing our form request, here. Please make sure you use your original email address to request the changes. If your original email address is no longer available, we’ll need authorization from another trusted contact on your account first, so please ask them to complete our form request, here.
They have to fill out the details such as your Crossref account name, and/or username/ DOI prefix number. Then, you can inform us the changes.
If you do not know who the registered contacts on your account are, please contact us. We will help reach out to the existing registered contact(s) to get their approval.
My colleague who usually registers the content has left my organization. I am the new editor for my journal. I don’t know the password for our account. What do I do?
Any changes to the people who have access to passwords on your account requires authorisation from one of the existing account contacts. If you are not a registered contact on your Crossref account but you know who is, please ask them to contact us about the change. If you just need user credentials, they can ask for that. If you will now be one of the main contacts on the account (eg the Primary contact) please ask them to specify that.
If you do not know who the registered contacts on your account are, please contact us. We will help reach out to the existing registered contact(s) to get their approval. Once we have their approval, we can proceed.
User credentials
Once we receive authorisation, we will be able to set you up with personal user credentials, and send you an email to set your own personal password. You may also want to request that we remove the old user, particularly if they have left your organization.
Role credentials
Once we receive authorisation, we will be able to send you a password reset for the shared role credentials. Please note that the old password may have been hard coded into your organization’s systems and processes, so do make sure to update these so you don’t break anything!
I’m using the OJS plugin with user credentials and I’m getting a 401 error when I try to register my articles*
You have to include an extra bit of information when you add your user credentials into the OJS plugin. You put your email address into the username field, but you also have to include a / and then a “role”. This “role” will have been provided to you when you joined Crossref, or when you were set up with user credentials. If you don’t use the “role” as well, you will get that 401 error.
In the example below, we’ve used our support email address, but obviously you would change this for your own email address. We’ve also added the role “creftest”, but you would swop this for your own role. If you aren’t sure what role you should be using, please contact us.
What if signing in still fails?
Sometimes if you are copying and pasting your credentials, this can introduce formatting or blank leading or trailing spaces in the settings. If you still can’t log in, please let us know by completing our contact form.
Best wishes,
Robbykha