ORCID is gathering support in Latin America. 2017 was a very busy year, and we are delighted to share some important achievements with you.
ORCID integrations and adoption
ORCID members in Latin America expanded their integrations in 2017, making it possible for more researchers to use iDs in research workflows.
In September, Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), the Brazilian national funding agency under the Ministry of Education, officially announced the adoption of iDs within their funding application system, international grants system, and national post-graduation programs evaluation system. CAPES’ aim is to be able to connect information about affiliation, grants, and publications; to follow the academic evolution of those who receive CAPES grant support; and to determine the impact of CAPES programs.
In the publishing sector, SciELO recently announced that, starting in 2019, all Brazilian indexed-journals (more than 250) will start to require ORCID iDs for authors during the submission process. Forty five journals are already requesting ORCID iDs during manuscript submission, and several have signed the ORCID open letter.
One of Latin America’s most prestigious universities, ORCID member Universidade de São Paulo (USP), has recently started a campaign to promote ORCID iD registration among their researchers. The campaign was organized by the Research Office, together with the Integrated Systems of Libraries (SIBI). So far more than 2,000 researchers have connected their iD to SIBI.
We’ve also awarded the first Collect & Connect Badges in the region to Universidade de Campinas, Consejo Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Tecnológica (CONCYTEC) and Redalyc. It is great to have the first exemplar implementations and we hope this will lead to more member organizations building high-quality integrations.
Membership
Interest in ORCID keeps growing. In 2017, we welcomed individual members across the Latin American region: Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Brazil), International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center – CIMMYT (Mexico), Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez (Chile) and Universidad de Los Andes (Colombia). Universidad de La Sabana (Colombia) joined in January.
Brazil has established the first consortium in the region. Led by CAPES, there are currently five members: CAPES, Conselho Nacional das Fundações Estaduais de Amparo à Pesquisa (CONFAP), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (IBICT), SciELO, and Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa (RNP) as the implementation coordinator. Talita Moreira de Oliveira, CAPES’ General Coordinator of Post Graduation Activities, says: “the strength of this consortium is to bring together the main promoters of Brazilian science and implement ORCID in our research information systems. Our goal is to reduce the time researchers spend entering data repeatedly in various sources, and improve the quality of available data, thus promoting the generation of knowledge in a more systemic way and allowing better monitoring and definition of public policies.” The consortium will develop to include research institutes in Brazil, making it unique in including all sectors of the research community: funding agencies, a meta publisher representing the most important Brazilian journals, and the universities.
Events
Together with El Colegio de México (COLMEX) we hosted our first workshop in Mexico in October. With 150 attendees and more than 100 people following via online streaming all over the country, the event was a total success! Our members Redalyc and Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, delivered interesting presentations about their experience implementing ORCID and, together with CONACYT, they talked about the benefits of using persistent identifiers in their workflows.
Also in Mexico, ORCID attended the annual Entre Pares event for the first time, to interact with the wider Latin American community and learn more about the challenges and opportunities of scientific communication in the region.
In October, Ana Heredia, ORCID Regional Director for Latin America, attended the Rede Nacional de Pesquisa Forum in Brazil. She participated in a discussion panel about the challenges and perspectives for ORCID adoption in research information workflows at a national level context, with CAPES, CNPq and IBICT representatives.
Ana Cardoso, Community Team Lead for the Americas, represented ORCID at OpenCon LatAm 2017. This was a great opportunity to meet and discuss with regional open access advocates about the future of scholarly communications in Latin America.
Outreach
Last, but not least, we’ve recently added Spanish and Portuguese subtitles to our Why ORCID? video. This resource is published under a CC0 license and we hope it will help enhance the understanding of ORCID between Latin American researchers.
Our wish for 2018 is to keep working with you towards the implementation of ORCID in Latin America. We are always happy to receive your feedback, questions, and ideas. Contact us!