We recently had the opportunity to try out Crossref’s new Metadata Manager interface, designed to be a user-friendly method to register and/or update metadata.

Metadata Manager doesn’t replace Crossref’s bulk content registration service, which members and their agents use to register large numbers of deposits at one time. Instead, it

actively supports [the] Content Registration service by offering a simpler, more flexible way to register and update metadata, for both single and multiple deposits.

For Crossref members who currently use the web deposit form to set up metadata for manual deposit, Metadata Manager offers significant improvements in clarity, accuracy, and ease of use.

As a Crossref member, you can access Metadata Manager using the same login credentials that you would use to log into the web deposit form. The first time you log in, you can add any publications already associated with your DOI prefix to your Metadata Manager workspace. You will then be able to access all previously deposited metadata records for these publications, as well as to deposit new content.

The Metadata Manager interface uses a shopping-cart-style model, in which you add new records to a deposit queue and have opportunities to review all records in the queue before depositing them. Metadata Manager confirms successful deposits and identifies failed deposits immediately, so that you can address metadata issues that may have caused a deposit to fail.

An important benefit of Metadata Manager is that you can use it to correct and update the metadata records associated with past deposits. Even if your Crossref deposits are handled in bulk by a third party (such as a hosting platform or aggregator), you can address metadata issues quickly and easily as they come up.

In addition to correcting errors in metadata records, you can use Metadata Manager to update records with key information such as retractions and corrections.

Currently, Metadata Manager is in beta mode and is able to handle deposits and updates of journal content only. (Other content types can be deposited via Crossref’s pre-existing web deposit form.)

Extensive documentation and support, including a full walk-through of the Metadata Manager interface, are available at https://www.crossref.org/help/metadata-manager/.