ARTiFACTS and ORCID: A Trusted Partnership Expanding Scientific and Academic Research Output

with Dave Kochalko, Co-Founder and President of ARTiFACTS

As a blockchain platform for scientific and academic research, ARTiFACTS allows researchers to create a permanent, real-time record of all research outputs and to receive formal citations. ARTiFACTS enables researchers to create an immutable record of their outputs so they can be securely shared, thus expanding access to vital information and accelerating discovery.

Learn more about how ARTiFACTS and ORCID are integrated in this video.

An Integration with Every ORCID API

ARTiFACTS became an ORCID member in 2019, and chose to develop an integration with every API ORCID offers to best support their researchers. It took approximately three months to complete the integrations, including the initial API research, workflow design, development, testing, and review of the finished product with ORCID.

ARTiFACTS Co-founder and President, Dave Kochalko says, “From day one, we recognized ORCID as a foundational partner. As an organization, it’s important for us to ensure scientists and scholars can discover new research and receive formal recognition for their own contributions—especially their pre-published research outputs, including algorithms, computer code, datasets, experimental designs, preprints, protocols, and many others. Our ORCID integrations enable us to do just that.”

He adds, “Services that enable and encourage scientists to share new findings securely and in real-time can make significant positive impacts on accelerating discovery, which is so important and evident when society turns to science for answers to global challenges.”

Becoming an ORCID Member

Becoming an ORCID member was an essential step in the original ARTiFACTS roadmap for delivering on their commitment to make ARTiFACTS services available within the workflows and systems used by researchers, their institutions, publishers, and technology providers. ARTiFACTS leadership includes an ORCID co-founder and former board member, so they understood how valuable ORCID services are for researchers across all disciples, and they knew how dedicated the ORCID team is to enabling a seamless user experience with complementary applications like ARTiFACTS.

After joining ORCID, the first thing ARTiFACTS wanted to achieve was to complete the implementation of each of the APIs ORCID makes available to members with third-party platforms. ARTiFACTS had already introduced signing into their system using one of ORCID’s credentials, which opens the front door for users to access their platform. But they also know there was a great deal more value they could offer researchers and organizations in the scholarly communications ecosystem by implementing each of the ORCID services.

Becoming an ORCID member was always part of ARTiFACTS’ plan.

Creating a Foundational Partnership

ARTiFACTS considers their relationship with ORCID a foundational partnership—one that goes well beyond being a member of the same club. By enabling their system to interoperate with ORCID, ARTiFACTS is a smarter resource for all researchers and is of much greater utility for ORCID users who crave access to the latest—oftentimes unpublished—research findings.

The integrations between ARTiFACTS and ORCID enable scholars to be recognized for all their research contributions to their discipline. Through personalized implementation support and integrated application user acceptance testing, ARTiFACTS’ ORCID membership better equips them to serve the scientists discovering new findings, as well as their universities, publishers, and technology providers.

A System Architecture Built to Include Trusted Partners

Given ARTiFACTS product vision, it’s worth illustrating their system architecture. ARTiFACTS is designed to provide a trusted service that secures the provenance of newly created research materials by scientists and scholars that enables real-time citation recognition. By recording these activities or “transactions” onto a distributed ledger, ARTiFACTS is dedicated to building a distributed index of research information that is openly accessible by all participants in the global research ecosystem.

To achieve this vision, both ORCID and bloxberg are among ARTiFACTS most valuable partners. The ORCID integration exposes ARTiFACTS services for its community of researchers, universities, publishers, and other organizations engaged in research and scholarly communications. ARTiFACTS partnership with the Max Planck Society— which leads the bloxberg consortium of nearly 40 respected research institutions who manage the trusted blockchain infrastructure—provides an independent and verifiable activity ledger.

Now that implementation with every ORCID API is complete, ARTiFACTS is pleased to offer the following capabilities and benefits:

Authenticate to ensure transactions with ARTiFACTS and one-click logins rely on a trusted relationship.
Display so colleagues using ARTiFACTS will recognize ORCID members and be able to reach out to collaborate where interests overlap.
Collect so ARTiFACTS learns what social information they want to share to help others identify their expertise and discover their work.
Connect so ARTiFACTS may update their ORCID Works record with their latest research, both published and pre-published outputs including code, dataset, experimental designs, methodologies, preprints, and others.
Synchronize so in one-click research works entered into ORCID or ARTiFACTS update each other, remain in sync, and reflect one’s most recent outputs and discoveries.

Progressing Toward Top Priorities

Since completing their technical integrations, ARTiFACTS’ top priorities are two-fold: First, to communicate the benefits of ARTiFACTS for researchers and other member organizations; and second, to listen and learn from their ideas and guidance for ways of enhancing how ARTiFACTS can contribute to their scholarship, career advancement, and organizational goals.

ARTiFACTS has many ideas and is eager to hear from their ORCID colleagues.

Conclusion: A Valued Relationship

For other service providers thinking about becoming an ORCID member or integrating with ORCID, Kochalko says, “ORCID has a clear vision for its role and value in the research information and scholarly publishing ecosystem. They are open and receptive to working with other providers serving the same markets, organizations, and especially the scientists and scholars who weave their ORCID iD into their own workflows. You will find ORCID to be a receptive and supportive partner.”

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