November 23, 2020

Altum Partners with Crossref To Help Funders Measure Grant Making Reach and Return

Integration of Crossref Grant Registration with ProposalCentral Enables Funding Organizations to Easily and Accurately Track the Outputs Connected to the Research They Support

RESTON, Va., November 23, 2020/– Altum, Inc., the maker of ProposalCentral, has joined Crossref as a sponsoring partner, enabling funding organizations to connect their grants and grantees with published outputs and easily measure the reach and return of their grant making efforts.

“At Altum we believe everyone should have transparency into scholarly funding and its results. With the ProposalCentral integration to Crossref, publishers can track who is funding their authors and funders can see the results,” said Steve Pinchotti, CEO of Altum

Under this sponsorship arrangement, membership in Crossref is available for existing ProposalCentral funder customers.   As the industry leader in grants and research management systems, Altum is only one of four Crossref sponsoring organizations in the United States.

For funders who choose to participate, each award is registered with Crossref with a Document Object Identifier (“DOI”) similar to how publications receive DOIs when published. The DOI for the grant is both a persistent identifier and a link to additional details about the award which the funder chooses to make open and public. The DOI and associated grant metadata is made available via Crossref to publishers, repositories and anyone else interested in using the information. Publishers use that grant DOI and metadata to enable authors to reference the award in their article. Unlike the current practice of putting the funder’s name in the acknowledgement section, this grant DOI provides a direct link between the publication (the new knowledge) and the grant enabling funders to track research outcomes and impact.

“We rely on Altum’s ProposalCentral as our platform for grants management. By connecting ORCID data with Crossref DOIs inside of ProposalCentral, we’re able to accurately track the outcomes of our grants and the impact our funded researchers are having long after the award ends,” said Kristen Mueller, PhD, Senior Director, Scientific Program at the Melanoma Research Alliance.

Close to 30 funding organizations have already joined Crossref as members.

“We are really pleased to be partnering with Altum,” said Rachael Lammey, Crossref’s Head of Special Programs. “The integration of grant registration into ProposalCentral provides a great way for the community to open up grant metadata and help funders and researchers more easily track the outputs that result from funded research.”

To get started, funders join Crossref and are issued with a specific DOI (Digital Object Identifier) prefix. Funders can then register their grants with DOIs with Crossref via the ProposalCentral grant maker dashboard.

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected]

About Altum
Altum is a software company driven towards the advancement of research. ProposalCentral is a cloud-based grants management platform designed to empower funders, connect the research community, and extend the impact of grant-making long beyond the award. Altum believes that research is most effective when it’s powered by a community. Altum shares an ambitious vision and an open mind-set, and their organization and platform are designed to foster true collaboration and partnerships. Altum’s headquarters is located in Reston, Virginia.

About Crossref
Crossref makes research outputs easy to find, cite, link, assess, and reuse. Crossref is a not-for-profit membership organization that exists to make scholarly communications better.

We rely on Altum’s ProposalCentral as our platform for grants management. By connecting ORCID data with Crossref DOIs inside of ProposalCentral, we’re able to accurately track the outcomes of our grants and the impact our funded researchers are having long after the award ends.

Kristen Mueller, PhD

Senior Director, Scientific Program - Melanoma Research Alliance