An ORCID consortium* is a group of five or more not-for-profit organizations that band together to form a community of practice that can apply ORCID services and resources in regional and national contexts, using global implementation standards.
Why join or form a consortia?
The benefits of belonging to an ORCID consortium stem from the strength of its community of practice. The sharing of knowledge and pooling of resources is a cost effective model that can help accelerate integration into your systems and maximize the usefulness of membership. Every consortium has a lead organization that catalyzes the adoption of ORCID in their community by assuming certain responsibilities, such as:
- Providing administrative support to their consortium
- Managing and supporting the onboarding of consortium members
- Employing dedicated community management staff
- Developing shared resources, communications materials, and events
- Maintaining consortium document repositories
- Working with the consortium community to identify goals, develop policy and governance, and establish regular progress reporting to members and ORCID
In addition to these community benefits, consortia members have access to our Affiliation Manager tool. Available exclusively to consortia members, the Affiliation manager tool significantly reduces the burden on smaller organizations who may not have the resources to build a custom integration. Using the Affiliation Manager, consortium members can populate their users’ records with affiliation data by simply uploading a CSV file. To find out more visit our page about it here.
Ready to join a consortium?
Currently there are active ORCID consortia in every region across the globe – chances are there is already one your organization can join. If so, we recommend you reach out to the contact listed in that consortium’s lead organization.
Forming a consortium
If there isn’t an active consortium in your region, there is always the option of forming one. We invite you to review the ORCID consortia roles and responsibilities and the consortium member license agreement to assess if this is a good option for your organization. The onboarding checklist summarizes the criteria that must be met before a consortium agreement can be finalized.
Setting up a new consortium is more involved than joining an existing one, and we are here to help you through that process. If you have other questions about forming or joining a consortium, email [email protected].
*The ORCID consortia program grew out of our Adoption and Integration project, carried out in 2013-14 and funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.