ORCID (https://orcid.org) is a non-profit organization that provides an open registry of unique identifiers for researchers. ORCID works with the community to ensure that this identifier is embedded in research workflows and becomes part of the metadata associated with research works and activities. The combination of these two ORCID mission activities—common open identifier and linking—can solve the name ambiguity problem in research and scholarly communications, critical for improving discoverability and interoperability between systems. For researchers, this means less time searching to find information and less time entering data on forms such as grant applications and post-award reporting. At the institutional level this means less time and more accuracy in identifying researchers and their works for training and outcomes evaluation reporting.
ORCID launched its Registry in October 2012. Since then over 160,000 researchers have registered for an identifier, and several systems including manuscript submissions and grant applications have begun to embed the identifiers.
ORCID announces a new project aimed at encouraging the adoption and integration of persistent researcher identifiers by research universities and scientific and social science professional associations. Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, this project will provide external funding and personalized outreach and technical support to participating organizations. The goal of this program is to catalyze broader community adoption by standardizing and streamlining the ORCID identifier integration process, collecting and documenting use cases, developing open source code samples, and providing case studies of working integrations. The program will disseminate use cases and integration best practices through an Outreach meeting and CodeFest, to be held in Chicago in May 2014. Up to 10 grants of $15,000-$20,000 each are available. Proposals are due by August 31, 2013. More information on the program and the RFP are available online, at https://orcid.org/content/rfp-2013-06-orcid-id-adoption-and-integration-program.
“Universities and professional associations understand the value of ORCID, but they want working examples of integrations before committing resources to embedding the identifiers in local systems,” said Rebecca Bryant, ORCID’s Director of Community. While the Sloan-funded award focuses on organizations based in the United States, it complements an initiative at developing possible ORCID identifier implementation use cases being carried out by JISC (www.jisc.ac.uk/) in the United Kingdom.
“The aim of this initiative, running from now until the end of July, is to demonstrate ways in which UK universities can take advantage of ORCID IDs,” said Vernena Weigert, JISC Programme Manager. “As part of this work, we will consult with a number of institutions including early adopters to provide an incentive for a wider range of UK universities to start conversations about ORCID implementation and to encourage them to adopt.” More information will be available on the JISC website soon.
The Association of American Universities (www.aau.edu), the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (www.cic.net), and the Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives (www.cesse.org) have agreed to communicate this opportunity to their member organizations. Barbara McFadden Allen, Executive Director of CIC explained, “CIC universities are working together to make better use of the data we produce about research to both improve research results and better describe the impact of that research. ORCID has a critical role to play in improving the data available, and this support from Sloan will help us engage quickly to see how we can integrate information about researchers into this process.” AAU is also interested in exploring the benefits ORCID identifiers. “The unique researcher identifier provided by ORCID helps link researchers and scholars to the outcomes of their work in a consistent way,” said John Vaughn, Executive President of AAU. “Such linkage will save time for researchers and scholars. It will also assist institutions, funding agencies and others in more accurately matching research and scholarly activities and outputs.”
More about ORCID. ORCID is (https://orcid.org) is an open, non-profit, community-based effort to provide a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and affiliations to these identifiers. ORCID is unique in its ability to connect disciplines, research sectors, and nations and its cooperation with other identifier systems.