Fuelling your CRIS – ORCID iDs as a tool for research intelligence

There is a growing international network of sophisticated research management systems, and it is beginning to change the way that research information is exchanged, analysed and understood.

This was part of the original vision that led to the creation of the Common European Research Information Format in 1991, and the establishment of euroCRIS in 2000. Since then, euroCRIS has emerged as much more than a standards body. It is the centre of a global community made up of a core of CERIF supporters (both end-users and software vendors) boosted by strategic partnerships with international initiatives like CASRAI, VIVO and the international repository community.

The unifying feature of every component in the global research information network is the exchange of information. All these systems, from profiles to fully-fledged CRIS’s ingesting CERIF-XML, take information from public, commercial and institutional sources ,combine it and embed the aggregated information in a rich context that is capable of supporting new analyses and vastly improved research intelligence.

Persistent Identifiers, such as ORCID iDs for researchers, are a crucial component in this endeavour, as they enable the disambiguation of people across systems, and the maintenance of reliable connections between people and their achievements. This is an essential service for CRIS users and vendors, and we at euroCRIS are delighted to have fostered these interactions from the outset.

Important to realise is that setting up a research information network or infrastructure is not merely a technological matter, but also requires standardisation on the business domain level, more specifically concerning vocabularies, semantics and use cases, as well as a sound governance structure.

This vision has recently been summarised, by three standard bodies in the research information domain, CASRAI, euroCRIS and ORCID, in a 3-layer model for definition and implementation of a sustainable research information policy, on an institutional and national, as well as international level.

The model provides a framework for identifying and structuring the various aspects involved, as well as stakeholders and their roles.

This is an example of how ORCID and its partners at euroCRIS are helping to shape a vision of the future of research information, including the services that ORCID currently provides and building on the never-ending enhancement of the systems in the research information ecosystem.

We held a webinar to discuss ORCID and CRIS’s on 18 December. The webinar was recorded, and the slides of the presenters are available to Slideshare. You can access them all online now: