At every conference we go to – every workshop, every presentation – we will invariably get a comment about our support team. It usually goes something like this: “Your support team is so responsive! They get back to me right away, and thoroughly address my question. I really feel that ORCID is listening to my concerns.” As a community driven organization, it is crucial that we have an excellent support team. Your feedback is important to us, to ensure we are on-track. Thank you, to all who have taken the time to send us your feedback on the responsiveness, thoroughness, and competency of our member services team, and kudos to Cat Wilmers and Liz Krznarich!
So, how do we make a good thing even better? Our latest innovation, the Member Support Center, at members.orcid.org. Designed as a one-stop shop for ORCID implementation, the member support center combines our existing technical documentation with sector-specific workflow guides and planning and communication resources. Let me describe some of my favorite things about it.
Sector-specific resources
First, we have organized our resources by community sector. The four most common member categories each have their own section: funders, research institution, publishers, and professional associations. For each, we describe use cases, workflows, and live examples, and we provide text and tools to make the most of your ORCID implementation, helping you to plan how to connect ORCID iDs in your system, integrate with the ORCID API, and effectively communicate about ORCID.
API Documentation
We have re-organized our API Documentation section to provide comprehensive resources to get started. Our tutorials and examples are now much easier to find, and put the API references to things like the ORCID data schema (XML), error codes, and allowed calls at your fingertips. We also provide resources to help with OAuth implementation.
Links to ORCID user groups and news
Finally, the site includes feeds from our other information resources like the API User’s Group and the ORCID Blog, which increases the site’s utility as a one-stop resource for members.
As we work with the community, we will be adding more use cases, code samples, and API training. While the Member Support Center was created with our current members in mind, prospective members and those using the public API also will find it useful. We value your input about information to include and how we can make it easy to find. Please tour the site and take a quick survey. And, if you have any questions, you can always contact us!