Austria launches its ORCID Consortium

This post is authored by Paloma Marin Arraiza and Christian Gumpenberger

 

Austria has taken a major step to adopt ORCID on a national scale. The official ORCID Austria launch event took place in Vienna on June 13. Co-hosted by consortium lead organizations TU Wien and the University of Vienna, supported by ORCID and E-Infrastructures Austria Plus, this was the third ORCID workshop in Austria, but the very first with a national consortium in place. The launch event was attended by  35 participants from 24 institutions. They discussed the benefits and challenges of integrating ORCID. 

Thanks to the participation of Paul Vierkant (Helmholtz Centre Potsdam), Gabriela Mejias (ORCID), and Pauline Crépel (MyScienceWork), the discussion was extended beyond Austrian borders and systems. Representing the German Consortium, Paul Vierkant gave an insight into ORCID-DE as both a national-funded project and a consortium. The ORCID-DE project has fostered collaboration between the German National Library, the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, and the University of Bielefeld, which have joined forces to work on the Integrated Authority File (Gemeinsame Norm Datei – GND) and the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE). Another lesson learned from the German consortium is that, to date their members have taken about a year to complete their ORCID implementation, from the expression of interest in membership until the integration launch. Gabriela Mejias focused on the use of the ORCID API, while Pauline Crépel stressed the importance of creating user-friendly systems — ensuring that users can connect their ORCID records with the integrating system in an intuitive way. 

During a roundtable discussion, the panelists contributed their personal views and experience with integrating ORCID, and the use of ORCID in funding applications  (the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) is one of the 11 ORCID Funders Open Letter signatories). They discussed ORCID in relation to current Austrian legislation on personal data within universities and research institutions, including data privacy, technical difficulties or lack of technical staff, and requirements for information systems used in Austria (for instance, OJS, PURE, Researchfish). Consortium members were asked to provide feedback on which systems are potential candidates for future ORCID integrations in Austria, so that the consortium leads  can leverage the global ORCID community as consortium members implement ORCID in these systems.n.

ORCID Austria: What’s next?

Following the official launch of ORCID Austria, TU Wien Bibliothek and the Vienna University Library have published the Joint Statement of Principles that includes the consortium’s governance and membership model, as well as the advantages and opportunities of ORCID institutional implementation. Their strategy focuses on achieving the following goals by December 2021:

1. Double the number of researchers in Austria that have an ORCID iD, compared with the estimated number of iDs at the time the consortium was established

2. All Austrian researchers’ ORCID iDs should be connected with their research outputs from at least the last 10 years

3. Austrian ministries and funders, as far as possible, should use ORCID data to evaluate and report on  institutional research performance

The launch of the consortium website —  a platform with information, frequently asked questions, and regular news and updates about ORCID (both in Austria and internationally) for consortium members and beyond will follow shortly and, in December, the consortium leads will also host an open participation webinar to comment on the first year of the consortium and highlight some implementation use cases.