Turn a funding statement into accurate funder and award metadata

1. Establish what the authors actually received

Begin with the accepted manuscript’s funding statement and the authors’ supporting information. Ask whether the support concerns the project, a person’s time, equipment or another contribution. ICMJE distinguishes support for the reported work from affiliations or support that did not contribute to it. An institution appearing in an author address is not automatically a funder.

Keep the exact supplied statement beside the proposed normalized fields. If the manuscript says nothing about funding, request clarification through the authorized editorial process. Silence is an unresolved field, not evidence that the work received no support. Record the author’s actual answer and date when it arrives.

Reference: ICMJE: manuscript preparation, sources of support

2. Distinguish the organization from the award

Crossref’s current overview supports funder names and organization identifiers such as ROR or Open Funder Registry IDs, together with grant identifiers or award numbers. The organization identifier names the funding body; an award number identifies an award in its own context. A grant DOI, when available, is another distinct identifier.

Before selecting an organization, compare its full name, country, alternate names and relevant organizational level with the author’s evidence. A parent university, hospital and foundation may be different entities. Similar spelling or a shared acronym is a reason to investigate, not a basis for assigning a match. Keep an unresolved match unresolved.

Reference: Crossref: funding data overview

3. Parse a fictional statement without adding associations

Consider this invented statement: “Foundation A supported project activities under [fictional award A]. Hospital B supported the analyst’s time. The authors are affiliated with University C.” These names are role placeholders, not real institutions. No organization or grant identifier has been looked up for them.

The statement supplies two support relationships and one affiliation. It does not supply a second award number, prove whether Hospital B issued a grant, or say that University C funded the study. The first crosswalk must preserve those differences instead of attaching every organization to every award.

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4. Preserve the relationship when preparing metadata

Crossref’s markup guide groups multiple funder–award combinations so the correct award stays associated with its funder. It distinguishes organization identifiers from award numbers and grant DOIs. It also explains that accepting a name-only record is not equivalent to making it discoverable through funding filters when no identifier match is established.

Represent the fictional draft as separate groups: Foundation A with its supplied teaching award placeholder, and Hospital B with support described but its award field unresolved. Do not place both organizations and one award in an undifferentiated list. This guide intentionally provides a field worksheet rather than executable XML; a real deposit must follow the current schema and deposit rules used by the responsible publisher.

Reference: Crossref: funding information and funder–award hierarchy

5. Resolve one ambiguity at a time

Suppose the author later clarifies, in the fictional exercise, that Hospital B provided protected time through an internal budget and assigned no award number. Record that statement and its scope. “No award number assigned” is more precise than “no funding”, and neither resolves the still-unverified organizational identifier.

Use a review table with the supplied text, proposed value, evidence, reviewer and disposition. Mark a field as verified only for the check actually completed. A correctly formatted identifier may still name the wrong organization; an author-confirmed award string may still have been attached to the wrong group during export.

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6. Check the actual deposit and its readback

Crossref recommends retrieving the metadata it holds to check the funding information. For a real authorized deposit, retain the submitted payload, response and record identifier, then inspect the returned funding groups. A successful upload response and a correct downstream record are separate pieces of evidence.

Compare names, identifier types and award associations against the reviewed crosswalk. If an association is wrong, preserve the discrepancy and use the responsible correction process. Before replacing funding information, check how that operation treats existing values. No upload or correction has occurred in this fictional example, and the article does not certify any publisher’s current deposit capability.

Reference: Crossref: funding data overview

7. Keep bilingual wording consistent with stable identifiers

Translate the explanatory funding statement naturally while retaining the actual identifiers and award strings exactly. Maintain a mapping between an Arabic display name and the verified organization record rather than creating a different identity for each language. Ask the author to resolve a substantive difference between the two statements.

Close the internal review only when every field is either supported or explicitly unresolved with an owner. An accurate missing-field note is useful production information. It is preferable to a complete-looking record that invents support, hides an ambiguous match or connects an award to the wrong organization.

Questions for a practical final check

• Preserve the author’s actual support statement.
• Keep affiliation separate from funding.
• Match the organization before assigning its identifier.
• Associate each award with its own funder.
• Distinguish unknown, absent and none assigned.
• Inspect actual deposited metadata after an authorized operation.