Documentation

Metadata Manager

The new Metadata Manager tool (previously known as the record registration form) can be used to deposit metadata for your records. You do not need any knowledge of XML to use it.

How to use the new Metadata Manager


Start at the landing page and sign in using your Crossref account credentials. You can choose to register a new record or edit an existing record. If you want to register a new journal article, book, report, dissertation, grant, or post-publication update, choose New Record.

Start a new record submission page

Create a new record

First, select the type of record you wish to register. You have the following options (though we plan to add more in future):

  • Journal Article: Register metadata for a journal article. A journal ISSN is required to register articles using this tool.
  • Book / Book Chapters: Register metadata for a monograph, edited book, reference book, or other type of book. You can also register chapter-level DOI records and include book series metadata.
  • Report / Working Paper: Register metadata for a report or working paper. Report records can contain report series metadata.
  • Dissertation: Register metadata for a dissertation or thesis.
  • Grant: Register metadata for a grant, award, fellowship, or similar type of research funding.
  • Post-Publication Update: Register metadata for a retraction notice, correction, or other post-publication update to a published journal article. A journal ISSN is required to register post-publication updates using this tool. You’ll also need a DOI for an update policy page, but it is not necessary to fully implement the Crossmark service.

After selecting the appropriate record type, enter the metadata associated with your record in the corresponding fields. Some fields are required to be filled out in order to submit your record, while others are optional. You can find links to our documentation in the form for more information on what each field means.

Journal article and post-publication update metadata also includes some information on the journal and, optionally, the issue and/or volume that the article was published in. To help avoid common errors with journal titles, you can auto-fill the journal metadata by choosing from a list of titles you have previously deposited into. You can search the list by title or by ISSN. Note that an ISSN is currently required to use the new Metadata Manager for registering journal content.

Autofilling journal metadata from the ISSN

Submit your record

After filling out the required fields as well as any optional metadata you want to deposit, check that everything looks correct and then click Submit at the bottom of the form. The submission will be made immediately and a success message will appear on the screen.

From the success page, you can click through to more information about your submission in our Admin tool, or start another submission right away. If you have registered a journal article, you can choose to repeat the process for another article in the same journal and/or journal issue, which will pre-fill the form with the appropriate metadata so you don’t have to re-enter it.

Journal article submission success page

If there is a problem with your submission, you will see an error message appear instead of the success page. Go to the documentation for tips on how to troubleshoot common errors from our deposit system.

Journal article submission error popup

Edit an existing record

Metadata can change over time, and Metadata Manager allows you to update your records to reflect this.

Choose Edit Record from the landing page or the sidebar navigation to see a list of the journal article and grant records you have previously registered using this tool, the web deposit form, or the deprecated legacy Metadata Manager.

Edit Record feature

You can search for any DOI, scroll through the list of previously registered records, or filter it by the date when the record was last updated. Find the record you are looking for and click Edit to access a form page with the record’s current metadata filled in. Simply make any changes and submit the record again to register the updated metadata. Note that post-publication update metadata can not currently be updated using this tool for technical reasons.

Page maintainer: Lena Stoll
Last updated: 2026-August-12