The ORCID Consortia Lead Workshop, held 5–6 March in Vancouver, was hosted at Simon Fraser University with the support of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN). The workshop brought together leads from our consortia in Brazil, Canada, Japan, Latin America and the Caribbean, Sweden, and the United States, as well as ORCID Board members from France, Sri Lanka, and the United States, to align strategies and share insights into the evolving ORCID ecosystem.
Consortia leads established an excellent sharing dynamic from the beginning, noting that they have much more in common than they realized. Among other things, they shared ways to engage with internal stakeholders and facilitate conversations between libraries, research offices, and IT departments. By sharing resources, initiatives, and experiences, these organizations can more effectively navigate the complexities of the global research ecosystem.
Strategic priorities for 2026–2029
The workshop highlighted several of ORCID’s key strategic pillars for the coming years, including the transition to the 2026–2029 strategy outlined in ORCID 2030: Advancing the Future of Research. ORCID’s third strategic theme, Broadening the Community, sparked discussions about how to better reach diverse academic sectors, such as the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), and the importance of digital credentialing, or the use of secure, verifiable cryptographically signed documents stored in digital wallets. The group also discussed how to expand support to research administrators, repository managers, and smaller organizations, ensuring that the benefits of persistent identifiers (PIDs) reach a geographically diverse audience.
Evolving policies, new functionalities, and technical roadmaps
Thanks to ORCID Board member Lori Ann Schultz, participants were able to join broader discussions on research administration and security, as well as the evolving relationship between libraries and research offices, particularly in light of US federal policies such as NSPM-33.
Participants also had the opportunity to get familiar with important new functionalities and technical roadmaps. One highlight of the workshop was the presentation and discussion of the newly launched Researcher Connect, a functionality to connect researchers with their institutional integrations. Apart from it, together with Erik Hanson and Juan Pablo Alperin of Public Knowledge Project (PKP), participants were able to focus on PKP and Open Journal Systems (OJS), which is an open source solution to managing and publishing scholarly journals online and is used by many consortium members. They delved into the newly updated OJS 3.5, specifically addressing its integration with ORCID, now part of the core code rather than a plugin, and its ability to assert roles, such as editorships.
Practical takeaways and community impact
Participants left the workshop with practical takeaways to implement locally, such as adding “how-to” guides to ORCID workshops and utilizing case studies to demonstrate value to members. The event underscored the role of consortia not just as administrative bodies, but also as community managers driving growth and national system cohesion. By strengthening knowledge exchange—from technical aspects to community engagement strategies—the workshop reinforced a shared commitment to building a more resilient, transparent, and integrated research world.
The benefits of belonging to an ORCID consortium stem from strength in numbers. ORCID consortia form communities of practice, either in a national or regional context, that share knowledge and pool resources in a cost-effective way to help accelerate integration into organizational systems so you can maximize the reach of data into researcher records and across the research ecosystem. If your organization would like to explore forming a new ORCID consortium, please reach out.
