As announced in December, we are beginning the process of deprecating several metadata schemas used to register DOI records with Crossref. Maintaining multiple schemas is resource-intensive and prevents us from moving forward with planned improvements to both the metadata we collect and how we collect it. For context, we have not retired any schema since 2007.
We are aiming to deprecate the schemas listed below by the end of this year as they are used by a small number of members:
- crossref4.3.1.xsd
- crossref4.3.2.xsd
- crossref4.8.1.xsd
- doi_resources4.3.2.xsd
- doi_resources4.3.4.xsd
- doi_resources4.3.5.xsd
- doi_resources4.4.2.xsd
Our current schema version is 5.4, and version 5.5 is scheduled for release later this year. We will be deprecating all versions prior to 5.3.1 over the coming years.
If you do not include affiliations in your metadata, migration is straightforward – it requires only updating the schema version number in your XML. If you do submit affiliation metadata, moving to 5.5 will require some revisions to accommodate a new affiliation structure; full details are available in our affiliation metadata markup guide.
We want this transition to be as smooth as possible and do not want schema migration to become a barrier to registering metadata. If you anticipate any difficulties with this change, please do get in touch, we are happy to help you determine the best path forward.