For many Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking scholars, name disambiguation is a serious problem. In fact, our ORCID video features a fictitious Spanish-speaking researcher – Sophia Maria Hernandez Garcia – as an example of why ORCID was founded and how we can help.
It’s a big issue – native Spanish or Portuguese speakers comprise over 9% of the world’s population, compared with only about 5.5% who are native English speakers.
Thanks to the Helmsley Trust’s generous support of ORCID, we are delighted to be closer than ever to the research communities in Latin America, and to work with them to to spread the word on the importance of ORCID’s work in providing unique, persistent, and individual iDs to researchers and to encourage ORCID adoption and use in the region. As ORCID’s new Regional Director for Latin America (and fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, and English!), I am looking forward to working with the local community.
We are delighted to welcome our first Latin American members:
– Redalyc, the University of the State of Mexico’s open access platform
– CONCYTEC – National Council of Science and Technology in Peru
– UNESP (Sao Paulo State University) in Brazil
We’ve been privileged to participate in some important events in the region, including a presentation on ORCID adoption and use by researchers at the VII Seminario de Recursos de Información para Bibliotecas Biomedicas in Chile in May; and exchanging ideas with librarians and institutional repositories on how ORCID can support their work at CBBD, a biannual librarian congress, in July. While this month, in an event hosted by Scielo and Scholar One, we discussed how ORCID can assist authors and editors in their day-to-day work during the manuscript submissions process.
We’re also excited to be preparing for our first two ORCID workshops in the region – in Sao Paulo on September 16, and Mexico City in October (date to be confirmed). Offered in partnership with our sponsors, Springer (Sao Paulo only) and Thomson Reuters, the workshops will provide a vision of how ORCID supports scientific communication, in the wider context of scientific publishing today. You can find out more about the program and register here for the Sao Paulo workshop or contact me directly for more information about the one in Mexico City.