New Zealand is joining the wave of countries to support and adopt ORCID. On July 26 New Zealand’s peak bodies representing the scientific and research community, along with funding agencies, released a joint statement of principle supporting the adoption and use of ORCID identifiers across the research and science system.
The statement recognises the unique benefits that ORCID identifiers can bring to the researcher, the research institute, the funding agency, the policy agency and to the system as a whole. The joint statement also recognised that ORCID aligns with the government’s data and information management principles: open, protected, readily available, trusted and authoritative, well managed, reasonably priced and reusable.
The statement reflects a collaborative effort across the sector to forming a cohesive and sustainable national approach to ORCID implementation. Many have commented that it is the first time they have seen such a collaboration that has resulted in the logos of New Zealand’s key research and science organisations on the same piece of paper.
Last December the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) formed a working group with representatives from Universities, Crown Research Institutes, independent research organisations and key government funding agencies. The working group developed the joint statement and has been considering how best to form a national consortium, ensuring that the consortium is fit for purpose for all the various sizes and types of research organisations in the country.
“It has been a great opportunity to work with the representatives on the ORCID working group”, Howard Amos University Librarian from the University of Otago and CONZUL representative said. “Librarians will be supporting the implementation of ORCID identifiers as part of the development of the wider research information management framework. The full benefits of ORCID will be realised from this national coordinated approach.”
Jeff Kennedy, Enterprise Architecture Manager at the University of Auckland, who represents Universities New Zealand on the working group and chairs the sub-group responsible for defining high-level technology requirements to support a New Zealand ORCID Consortium, said “The conceptual design for the ORCID Hub has resulted from a warm and effective collaboration between eight different organisations. This collaboration is richer for the contributions of ORCID, whose passionately-engaged people are enormously capable and unerringly terrific to work with.”
Andrew Watkins, General Manager IT at NIWA, who represents Science New Zealand on the working group said, “I’m very impressed with the collaborative process being used to ensure that adopting ORCID will result in real benefits to the science community. The work required by institutions to adopt ORCID into their systems will be made much simpler by the proposed New Zealand ORCID Hub and this will enable broad adoption across organisations of all sizes”.
We are hoping that a national ORCID consortium with both research organisations and funding agencies will be coming soon.
