ORCID is a community-driven organization. The ORCID community includes individual researchers, universities, national laboratories, commercial research organizations, research funders, publishers, national science agencies, data repositories, and international professional societies, all of whom have been critically affected by the lack of a central registry for researchers.
ORCID continues to benefit from our steering and working groups, which guide and support the evolution and ongoing development of the ORCID system. These are structured to facilitate broad and open participation of interested community members, provide opportunities to participate with different levels of time commitment according to interest and expertise, and provide ORCID guidance on priorities and execution of specific plans.
But, ensuring that the ORCID Registry is effective is only one part of our mission. ORCID identifiers are part of a larger community effort to create interoperable research infrastructures through adoption and use of trusted persistent identifiers and standard vocabularies and record formats. To be better able to participate in and support this broader community effort to promote data quality in the collection, management, exchange and aggregation of research information, ORCID is partnering with the following organizations:
- CASRAI: ORCID metadata reflects the standard terms and record formats advanced in the CASRAI dictionary. In addition to a Research Personnel Profile specification CASRAI is also advancing additional person-related profiles (CVs, Funding Applications, Impact Reports, etc.) that can be associated with an ORCID identifier.
- DataCite: ORCID (through the ODIN Project) has implemented a search and link tool to associate datasets listed in DataCite with ORCID records; DataCite has updated their metadata standard to include ORCID iDs for data contributors.
- euroCRIS: ORCID metadata structure is consistent with EuroCRIS CERIF ontologies, and CERIF includes a field to store an ORCID identifier.
- Force11: ORCID supports the Force11 Resource Identification initiative to create a data exchange standard and identifiers for research resources.
- Global Alliance for Genomics and Health: ORCID supports the Global Alliance initiative to create standards for the ethical use, exchange, and citation of clinical and genomics data
- ISNI: ORCID supports interoperability with ISNI, uses ISNI organizational identifiers in our affiliations module, and has implemented a search and link tool to associate an ORCID record with an ISNI person identifier.
- Research Data Alliance: ORCID is participating as a member of the RDA Organizational Advisory Board, on the Persistent Identifier Interest Group, and on the Federated Identity Interest Group.
In addition, ORCID is a participant in the ODIN Project, the ORCID and DataCite Interoperability Network, a two-year project that started in September 2012, funded by the European Commission’s ‘Coordination and Support Action’ under the FP7 programme. Our ODIN partners are innovators in science, information science and the publishing industry and include CERN, the British Library, DataCite, Dryad, arXiv and the Australian National Data Service.
ORCID supports community efforts to promote interoperability in research data exchange. We are pleased that CHORUS and SHARE have included ORCID identifiers as a key component of their systems to facilitate public access to research funded by US government research agencies. ORCID actively supports organizations that promote integration of ORCID iDs. Some ORCID Board members are independently involved in both projects in a variety of capacities. For more on ORCID integration into these systems, see the CHORUS and SHARE Websites.
Together, we see participation in community intiatives and partnership with these organizations as vitally important for the mission of ORCID, and more broadly for the success of research e-infrastructure initiatives. Improving interoperability translates into better discoverability, citability, and more reasons to share research results. That’s what it’s all about.
