Denmark’s universities and research institutions all have their own CRIS (current research information system) with extensive information on their researchers and research output. Information on publications are harvested on a national basis to create a national research dissemination and promotion site. This also supports the calculation of the national bibliographic indicator, one of the comparative measures used by the government to determine the funding of universities.
Each of the CRIS features a local researcher ID, but Denmark has lacked a reliable way of identifying authors across institutions. Underlying any attempt to create a reliable and sustainable system to collect and analyse these publication data there is a need to correctly identify researchers, across their careers, changes in affiliation, and changes or variations in names, and link all of these variants with a coherent publication record.
To solve this problem, Denmark has decided to actively drive engagement with ORCID in their community by integrating ORCID across local CRIS and national systems. Six out of Denmark’s eight universities, all university colleges, and a consortium of research institutions signed a consortium agreement with ORCID in August and launched their integration project on 1 September, 2014.
Universities and research institutions involved in the Denmark Consortium:
- Aalborg University Library
- Aarhus University Library
- Copenhagen Business School Library
- Det Kongelige Bibilotek
- Roskilde Univrsity Library
- Technical University of Denmark
- University Library of Southern Denmark
- University Colleges Denmark – UC Viden
Getting to Go with ORCID
(1) A national discussion
With the potential offered by the shared repository system and established lines of communication, DEFF (Danmarks Elektroniske Fag- og Forskningsbibliotek), Denmark’s government funded electronic research library, initiated a study group to determine whether a national approach involving ORCID could be a solution. Led by Mogens Sandfaer and Mikael K. Elbæk, both at the Technical Universty of Denmark (DTU), the DEFF study group hosted a workshop to explore interest and feasibillity of national implementation of ORCID. Similar workshops have been organized subsequently by Jisc/ARMA and ANDS/CAUL for discussions of national membership in the UK and Australia, respectively, and these in-person meetings have proved useful in addressing questions and discussing implementation strategies.
From the beginning of the discussion it was clear that the existing local person-IDs would not provide great value for the Danish institutions in a world of research that does not know or care about the borders of countries or institutions. “It is also a huge driver that ORCID will provide better documentation of research which will benefit everyone in the scholarly communication system in multiple aspects,” said Mogens Sandfaer. “Most obviously, ORCID provides a persistent identifier across a research career, across borders. What makes ORCID particularly interesting and worth the effort is that it provides a non-commercial and sustainable organization behind the international identification of authors.”
By Denmark being one of the first countries to make a collected effort to provide ORCIDs to its researchers and implement it into the national research information infrastructure, it also provides a key element in the ongoing effort to attract competitive research funds. In this spirit, Denmark has instituted a friendly ORCID registration competition between participating institutions. Said Sandfaer, “The sooner Danish researchers get their ORCID ID the sooner they and their institutions can profit from the benefits of ORCID”. The DEFF-funded ORCID implementation project has the goal 80 % participation by researchers, through registration or capture into the local Pure CRIS system. To ignite the participating institutions to reach this goal, project funds are subject to registration thresholds of 40 %, 60 % and 80 % of the total number of FTE researchers.
(2) Vendor support.
Danish universities use the Pure CRIS system, and during these discussions Pure developers were working to support ORCID in their product. The first phase of this integration was launched in February 2014 (release 4.18), and allows users to link their ORCID license to Pure and create and verify ORCIDs within the Pure interface, and also for research managers to monitor their researcher’s use of ORCID and create reports on the content linked to them. The development was funded by the Danish Pure users. Pure is one of several CRIS platforms that have integrated ORCID identifiers.
(3) ORCID consortium agreement.
Denmark then turned to ORCID to develop a consortium licensing agreement (2). The Technical University of Denmark was established as a lead organization, managing administrative and technical components of communication with ORCID. Each consortium participant is provided access to the Member API, and membership can be a mix of basic and premium license types. The Denmark consortium has 8 participating members, and as such was eligible for a 10% overall discount in the membership fee, in addition to the non-profit discount applied for non-profit higher education organizations. More information on consortium membership is available on the ORCID Website.
(4) Managing implementation and researcher engagement.
Successful implementation of ORCID requires a coordinated technical and social engagement strategy. To support local efforts such as the Danish registration competition, ORCID offers a number of options for managing communications. In addition to fora for research managers and technical staff, ORCID has published a planning guide for higher education institutions. More resources are available on our Research Organizations webpage, including use cases, contacts, blog posts, and outreach resources. We are in the process of rolling out community pages for our consortium members, that will offer an integrated online location for conversations, documents, and technical support. Denmark has established a web portal for managing their ORCID implementation.
(5) Enjoy the benefits!
Our goal at ORCID is to help you accurately and easily identify and link researchers and scholars with their professional activities and affillations. We are here to streamline the ORCID implementation process at universities, and also to support your use of ORCID by ensuring that publishers, funders, associations, and repositories are embedding ORCID identifiers into their processes and systems. We are always interested in your feedback and suggestions. You can reach us at https://orcid.org/help/contact-us.
References
(1) Adrian Price (2012) Author Identification in Denmark: ORCID and Repositories. ScieComInfo 8(3).
(2) The Madroño Consorcio joined as a consortium member of ORCID earlier in 2014.