RN Score

Measure Your Research Nexus Contribution

Research Nexus Score evaluates how well your metadata connects research outputs, people, organizations, and funders - the pillars of Crossref's Research Nexus vision.

What is the Research Nexus?

The Research Nexus is Crossref's vision for "a rich and reusable open network of relationships connecting research organisations, people, things, and actions." It goes beyond simple persistent identifiers to create an interconnected scholarly record.

Research Integrity

Metadata signals trustworthiness through provenance data: funding sources, contributor roles, corrections, and originality verification.

Reproducibility

Connections between literature, data, software, protocols, and methods enable others to replicate research outcomes.

Reporting & Assessment

Organizations track research investment outcomes, benchmark performance, demonstrate funder compliance, and inform decisions.

Discoverability

Richer metadata records including abstracts and references increase visibility across thousands of systems that consume Crossref data.

How We Calculate Your Score

Nexus Score is calculated from Crossref's pre-computed coverage statistics. We measure five dimensions that reflect how well your metadata contributes to the Research Nexus.

25

Provenance

Establishes trust through citation links and content verification.

  • References coverage
  • Similarity checking
  • Update policies
20

People

Connects researchers to their work through persistent identifiers.

  • ORCID iDs
  • Contributor roles
15

Organizations

Links research outputs to institutions and organizations.

  • Affiliations
  • ROR IDs
20

Funding

Tracks research funding sources and enables compliance reporting.

  • Funder Registry IDs
  • Award/grant numbers
20

Access

Improves discoverability and clarifies usage rights.

  • Abstracts
  • Licenses
  • Full-text links

How Scores Are Calculated

1. Coverage Data: We use Crossref's pre-computed coverage percentages for each metadata field (current and backfile).

2. Dimension Score: Each dimension's percentage is the average of its current and backfile coverage values.

3. Weighted Total: Final score = (Provenance × 25% + People × 20% + Organizations × 15% + Funding × 20% + Access × 20%)

4. Grading: A (80-100), B (60-79), C (40-59), D (20-39), F (0-19)

Aligned with the Barcelona Declaration

Nexus Score supports the open research information movement by making metadata coverage visible, measurable, and improvable. Better metadata means better connections across the scholarly ecosystem.

Data sourced from the Crossref REST API. Nexus Score analyzes metadata coverage for 27,000+ publishers registered with Crossref.