Since 2022, ORCID has given over $350K in funding to 20 organizations through our Global Participation Fund (GPF), a project of ORCID’s Global Participation Program (GPP), for the purpose of improving understanding and encouraging uptake of ORCID in under-represented countries in the Global South. Grants are offered under two different programs—Community Development and Outreach and Technical Integration.
Grants from the Community Development and Outreach program support local partners to build robust Communities of Practice, encouraging adoption of ORCID both by researchers and at the institutional level. These grants can be used to support local outreach activities, training, and tech support resources for the creation and growth of ORCID consortia that serve those regions.
Grants from the Technical Integration program can be used to fund software development to build and update ORCID integrations in open-source systems. This will foster participation in ORCID in currently under-represented regions and support the creation of technical documentation, outreach, and support for resources created through the grants.
To read more about how the GPF and the GPP fit into ORCID’s strategic priorities to increase global adoption of ORCID, especially in under-represented countries, we invite you to read From Vision to Value: ORCID’s 2022–2025 Strategic Plan.
We are happy to announce that GPF grants have been awarded to the following organizations in our fourth round of awards:
Grants for Community Development and Outreach
Department of Library & Information Sciences, Central University of Himachal Pradesh
The goal of this project by the Department of Library & Information Sciences, Central University of Himachal Pradesh is to establish a persistent online presence of every researcher of India. Each week, three-to-four webinars will be conducted in collaboration with institutions. Following webinars, an online quiz will be conducted, with winners receiving merchandise and being recognized as ambassadors. This initiative will not only help prospective researchers enhance their digital discoverability but will also benefit ORCID by building a comprehensive database of academic institutions in India.
Research and Education Network in Uganda (RENU)
The UConnect project is aimed at establishing an ORCID consortium in Uganda to foster a community of practice. At its core, it seeks to equip institutions with a digital repository for archiving research papers and dissertations. Research and Education Network in Uganda (RENU) will conduct technical support, capacity building, and awareness campaigns to promote ORCID uptake. The project aims to boost ORCID adoption among Ugandan researchers, aligning with GPF’s goal to promote ORCID awareness and integration.
The University of Central Asia
The “ORCID Community: KG Initiative” by The University of Central Asia is aimed at uniting researchers into a single network in Kyrgyzstan. It proposes to conduct seminars for 35 universities, with the participation of 600 scientists. These seminars will focus on ORCID, which will help enhance researchers’ visibility and streamline their publications. By offering both online and offline training modes, the project aims to reach a wider range of researchers while also providing on-site mentoring for individual consultations.
Grants for Technical Integration
Michigan State University
This project by Michigan State University integrates ORCID with Humanities Commons (HC), a scholarly communications platform with a global audience of nearly 50,000 users. Academy-owned/operated and free to use, HC provides tools for open scholarly collaboration and communication. It will build a plugin that allows scholars to display their public ORCID data on any WordPress site; in this project they will integrate the plugin with HC and establish HC as an ORCID data provider, enabling two-way connections across the systems.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The Global Dataverse Community Consortium (GDCC) by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill proposes to deepen its integration with ORCID to support round-trip metadata integration between Dataverse, DataCite, and ORCID. The Dataverse team will develop and document these capabilities in concert with the Global community, specifically with organizations and researchers in the Global South using Dataverse and leverage ongoing outreach, maintenance, and support activities to encourage long-term use of the new capabilities.
Want to learn more about past awardees’ experience applying for GPF grants and progress on their initiatives? Watch the replay of Spearheading Change Across the Globe: A showcase of ORCID Global Participation Fund. You can also sign up for blog updates to learn about the next call for proposals for the GPF program, as well as spotlights from past awardees. Stay tuned for the next call for GPF proposals, which will be announced in October!
