Discover STM Publishing Ltd
Indexing & Visibility · November 5, 2026

What does a journal need for Crossref and PubMed Central?

Crossref registers DOIs and expects them to keep working. PubMed Central reviews journal and file quality. A plain list of what each requires, with sources.

What does a journal need for Crossref and PubMed Central?

By Adnan Usmani, Director of Operations, Discover STM Publishing Ltd

Crossref and PubMed Central (PMC) do two different jobs. Crossref registers your articles' DOIs and expects you to keep the links working. PMC is an archive run by the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) that reviews the quality of a journal and the quality of its files before it joins. This post lists what each one asks of a journal, so you can see where yours stands. It explains published requirements. It does not promise that any journal will be accepted anywhere.

In short

  • Crossref registers DOIs and expects them to keep working.
  • PMC reviews journal and file quality, and lists at least 25 peer-reviewed articles as a condition to apply.
  • Crossref comes first. PMC comes later, once the journal has a track record.

What does Crossref do, and what does it ask of a journal?

Crossref is a registration agency for DOIs. A DOI is a permanent link to an article. Crossref does not judge whether your journal is good. It records the details of your articles and keeps the link between each DOI and the article page.

Crossref's terms of membership (last updated 11 July 2025) ask members to:

  • keep each DOI resolving to a landing page, and keep the page address registered with Crossref up to date and active;
  • show each DOI on its landing page in the format Crossref requires, as a clickable link;
  • add DOIs to the references inside each article's reference list;
  • deposit accurate metadata for every item.

Crossref's display guidelines say a DOI should appear as a full link in the form https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx, without "doi:" in front. All metadata sent to Crossref is XML. Many editors register content through a helper tool or their publishing platform, so they never write the XML by hand.

What does it cost?

Crossref's fee page (updated 11 September 2026) lists an annual membership fee that depends on an organisation's publishing revenue or expenses: 200 USD a year for organisations under 1,000 USD and 275 USD for organisations between 1,000 and 1 million USD. For 2026 it lists a registration fee of 1.00 USD for each current journal article (published in 2024 to 2026) and 0.15 USD for each older article. From 2027, Crossref says most current-record prices are reduced and back-year records are free. The new prices are in a separate Crossref announcement, so check it before you budget.

What does PubMed Central require?

PMC lists these conditions before a journal can apply (page updated 19 August 2026):

  • a registered ISSN with a confirmed record in the ISSN Register;
  • electronic publication that meets PMC's access policy;
  • at least 25 primary, peer-reviewed articles published in final form. PMC lists clinical case reports among the primary article types;
  • a clearly stated peer-review policy and a scope in biomedical and life sciences;
  • NLM expects at least a two-year history of quality scholarly publishing in the life sciences, and it may consider less where the staff have comparable experience.

The steps after that are an application through the PMC Publisher Portal, an initial screening, a scientific quality review and a technical evaluation. For the technical evaluation the publisher sends about 25 recent articles as full-text files, and each one must accurately match the version of record. A journal gets up to three rounds to fix reported errors, and the application is rejected if errors remain after the third. A journal that fails the initial screening or the scientific quality review may reapply after 24 months.

Which one matters first for a small journal?

Crossref is mostly about discipline: live landing pages, visible DOIs and correct metadata. PMC is about editorial quality and file quality, and it comes later, once the journal has a track record.

A short self-check

  1. Does the journal have a registered ISSN?
  2. Does every article page show its DOI as a link?
  3. Do the reference lists carry DOI links?
  4. Are the peer-review and ethics policies published on the site?
  5. Can the platform produce clean full-text XML for the articles?

Frequently asked questions

Does Crossref decide whether my journal is good enough?

No. Crossref registers DOIs for members. PMC is the one that reviews quality.

How many articles does a journal need before applying to PMC?

PMC lists at least 25 primary, peer-reviewed articles in final form.

What if PMC says no?

At the screening and quality-review stages PMC says the journal may reapply after 24 months.

Can Discover STM Publishing Ltd promise that my journal will be accepted?

No. No publisher can promise acceptance by any database. We can tell you what is asked and help you prepare your platform and files.

Where do I confirm the current rules?

On the official pages listed below. Fees and rules change.

Which item on the self-check does your journal find hardest today?

About Discover STM Publishing Ltd

Discover STM Publishing Ltd publishes and hosts a portfolio of nine journals for societies, universities and publishers, and has provided publishing services to journals since 2012. Editors keep every editorial decision. To talk about hosting or an editorial office for your journal, write to [email protected].

Sources (rechecked 4 Nov 2026)

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