Lietuvos mokslo periodikos asociacija
The Association of Lithuanian Serials

CrossRef, an international organization uniting academic publishers, has another member in Lithuania: Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) has joined innovative initiatives of research journal publishing. Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VGTU) was the first Lithuanian institution to become a member of CrossRef, whereas soon the Association of the Lithuanian Physicians followed VGTU steps.

The first goal of CrossRef is to ensure a simpler and more compatible access to published scholarly information. This is guaranteed by digital object identifier (DOI) which ensures that published research findings could always be found. No doubt this is important for both the Lithuanian research journals and academics publishing their research findings there. The importance of the CrossRef service is proved by the statistics: nearly 3,500 publishers from around the world use it in their day-to-day activities. CrossRef database contains 23,000 registered journals, around 1,700 libraries from 56 countries and nearly 50m registered DOIs. Since 2008, all of the articles published in the VGTU journals and since 2009 – articles published in the Lithuanian Journal of Physics have had DOIs.

With a rapidly increasing number of journals and articles published worldwide, there are more dishonest authors who submit for publication works plagiarised from other authors or articles compiled of their own publications published earlier on.  For this reason, CrossCheck, a service provided by CrossRef, is very topical. It can identify corresponding text in a publication with the texts published in the past. CrossCheck has access to search for the instances of plagiarism even in the closed-access databases. VGTU journal editorial boards have been checking novelty and originality of the submitted manuscripts in CrossCheck since 2009.

Another innovation introduced by CrossRef is Cited-by system which has an option of viewing who cites an article published in a journal at a journal’s website. This system was implemented on VGTU journal websites in 2011. CrossMark system, the latest CrossRef product which is being prepared for distribution, will provide more detailed information on whether scholarly information presented in an article or a book was changed since it was first published. It could be a corrected mistake, or, either updated or completed texts.

Eleonora Dagienė, director of VGTU press and chair of the council of LMPA is convinced that the more the Lithuanian institutions and editorial boards of their published journals use services offered by CrossRef, the bigger credit from the worldwide academic societies and databases they can get.

Leonas Balaševičius, director of KTU research council, notes that the editorial boards of the KTU journals are really interested in CrossCheck service which they have heard of from their colleagues and which they tested during the visit of Geoffrey Bilder, director of strategic initiatives at CrossRef, in February this year.

We hope that not only the editorial boards of KTU, but also other Lithuanian academic publishers will join CrossRef and will implement their offered initiatives in publishing of their research journals. Organizations which do not have possibilities of becoming CrossRef members can contact the Association of Lithuanian Serials (LMPA) and use the innovative academic publishing services with its help.

CrossRef (www.crossref.org) is an official DOI registering organization which encourages cooperation among academic publishers. Its goal is to ensure simpler and more confident access to the scholarly content published online. CrossRef was established in 2000 as an independent, non-for-profit organization which uses an effective and trustworthy DOI system for identification of academic literature.

The Association of Lithuanian Serials (www.moksloperiodika.lt) is a non-for-profit organization which unites the Lithuanian institutions, agencies, companies, organizations and persons related to serials publishing. It operates in the territory of the Republic of Lithuania. It helps its members achieve their goals and coordinates their activities, represents and defends the interests and needs of the Association members by cooperating with foreign and international organizations. Developing its academic publishing, working on and implementing advanced technologies and innovations, LMPA nurtures the culture of academic publishing in Lithuania.