I recently introduced a simple visualization of data from the CrossRef Participation Reports that provides quantitative insight into how completeness of CrossRef metadata collections with respect to eleven key metadata elements has changed between the backfile and the current record collections. An important goal of that work is to identify members with relatively complete metadata that can provide examples for helping other members understand the benefits of improved metadata. Before we explore and compare individual cases, it is interesting to establish the big picture as a background that we can keep in mind as we look at specifics.

The CrossRef Participation Reports provide a wealth of information about completeness of CrossRef metadata collections and, equally interesting, comparisons between two time periods (backfile and current). These comparisons provide unique opportunities to examine metadata evolution through time. This blog introduces a tool that can be used to visualize this evolution.