At ORCID, we are all about community. We’re here to serve the research community in its broadest sense, and we do so by working with you, our friends, in that community.
What does it mean to be a friend of ORCID?
Just as friendship takes many forms, there are many ways that you can help us achieve our shared vision — of a world where all who participate in research, scholarship, and innovation, are uniquely identified and connected with their contributions and affiliations across disciplines, borders, and time. Volunteering your time to serve on one of our Working Groups or Task Forces, helping us with UI/UX testing, joining our newly launched Friends of ORCID Slack channel, or simply giving us your feedback by taking our community survey — these are just a few examples of how to get involved.
Calling all researchers!
Since 2019 is our Year of the Researcher, we are especially keen for researchers to be well-represented in our projects and activities. Make sure we hear what you have to say by:
- Taking our community survey. It will take around 10 minutes and we’ll publish the results later this year. This is your chance to tell us what you like about ORCID (and what you don’t!), how you use your ORCID iD, and more. We’ll be listening!
- Volunteer to be a UI/UX tester. Our newest staff member, Mallory Robertson, joined us this week as our first User Experience Specialist. Look out for a post from her shortly with more details. In the meantime, please contact us if you’d like to provide feedback to help us improve our user interface.
- Join our soon-to-be launched Academia & Beyond Task Force. This year, we’re going to be taking a deep dive into the Arts & Humanities, Life Science, and Clinical Medicine communities. Understanding what makes these communities different, as well as what they have in common, is vital to serving their needs. To do this, we need input from a wide range of researchers in these fields — across different geographies, career stages, and subjects. Interested? Get in touch for more details.
- Follow the work of our Person Citations Working Group. They will be thinking through use cases, data models, and possible functionality to enable grouping and citation of a body of a person’s contributions.
Thank you to our Working Group and Task Force members
In addition to our ongoing, Board-led Working Groups (Membership and Fees, ORCID in Publishing, and Trust) there are typically several ad hoc ORCID Working Groups and Task Forces in place at any one time.
Our thanks to the 80+ community volunteers from all over the world who participated in these groups during 2018, as well as to everyone who commented on their recommendations:
- Membership and Fees Working Group. Charged with exploring options to lower technology barriers, improve data quality, and expand the reach of ORCID in underserved communities
- ORBIT Funder Working Group. Provides expert input on the ORBIT project, including mapping data model requirements, and discussing topics such as persistent identifiers for grants, interactions with publishers, data sharing workflows, and administrative burden for researchers
- ORCID in Publishing Working Group. Aims to increase knowledge and adoption of new ORCID programs and initiatives by the publishing community, and to increase ways for the publishing community to inform and support existing and new programs and initiatives
- ORCID in Repositories Task Force. Charged with reviewing, providing feedback on, and further developing the proposed recommendations for supporting ORCID in repository systems. Draft recommendations were shared for public comment in November and the final recommendations will be published shortly
- Publications and User Facilities. During 2018 the group worked on implementing their recommendations, including launching the Research Resources section of the ORCID record
- Trust Working Group. Activities last year included reviewing our trust practices, engaging in our work on assertion assurance and on-behalf-of workflows, and considering interactions with blockchain initiatives
As part of the RIPEN program, we are working to recognize the service of our volunteers on their ORCID records (with their permission, of course!). Look out for more on this in a future post.
