We are delighted to announce that the ORCID US Community consortium, which is the largest ORCID community of practice in the world, recently signed its 200th member in July. Formed in 2018 by four existing consortia in the US with 88 members, the community had 100 member organizations in late 2018 and now celebrates doubled growth. Lyrasis serves as the US Community consortium lead in partnership with the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA), and the NorthEast Research Libraries (NERL). The ORCID US Community will be celebrating this exciting milestone at their upcoming community showcase webinar on Wed., 20 Sept., 1-2pm Eastern Time; all interested parties are invited to register to attend.
As the consortium lead, Lyrasis is responsible for providing administrative support; managing onboarding of new members; developing and maintaining resources, communications, materials, and events; identifying goals; and sharing reports with ORCID and members.
“I am honored to have spent the past five years supporting all of our ORCID US Community member organizations to help them get the most value from their ORCID memberships,” said Sheila Rabun, Program Leader for Persistent Identifier Communities at Lyrasis, who serves both the ORCID US Community and the Lyrasis DataCite US Community. “It has been so rewarding to hear success stories from our members and see the growth and progress in our ORCID community of practice across the US.”
Some of the most significant highlights from the last five years at Lyrasis began with Rabun’s hire.
2018 – Sheila Rabun was hired to manage the ORCID US Community
2018 – ORCID US Community open listserv established (anyone can join)
2019 – First round of ORCID US Community Award winners announced, and the awards program continues to recognize community members for their participation, contributions, and leadership
2020 – Stanford University and California State University system faculty senates endorse ORCID, setting an example for other university faculty senate groups to follow
2020 – Non-profit funders start to join the consortium, which until this point had been mainly universities
2021 – Paolo Gujilde joined the Lyrasis staff as the ORCID US Community Specialist
2022 – Launched recurring “ORCID Workshop for Researchers” webinar
2023 – A partnership between the ORCID US Community and the Drexel University LEADING fellows program produced a set of open data visualization resources, enabling research organizations to create a map of researcher publication collaborations, based on public data from ORCID records
2023 – ORCID US Community reached 200 members, with the US Coast Guard Academy as the 200th member
“The rapid adoption of ORCID among the higher education and research community, bolstered by strong leadership from the library community, indicates robust support for the changes needed to advance scholarly communication,” said Celeste Feather, Senior Director of Content and Scholarly Communication Initiatives at Lyrasis. “ORCID and other persistent identifiers provide much-needed connections to systems and individuals as researchers around the world collaborate to address global challenges.”
While the size of the ORCID US Community consortium is impressive, its success comes from strong leadership that is committed to fostering learning at every level of experience with ORCID, from beginners to seasoned veterans. Fortunately, this is a model that any ORCID consortium can follow to grow and strengthen their own community of practice, regardless of its size or how long it has been in existence. Lyrasis has relied on a simple and consistent approach to building a thriving community: implementing a strong member support system and offering an impressive range of continually up-to-date content and resources for its community to educate and provide technical support to its members. Some of these include:
- Monthly community calls
- Outreach guides for connecting with researchers
- Community showcase featuring case studies of ORCID implementation
- Topical information, such as preparation for NSPM-33 research security policy and finding ORCID record holders at your institution
“In the five years since the forming of the US ORCID Community, its influence on scholarly endeavors is unmistakable,” said Brian Minihan, ORCID’s Engagement Lead for Global Consortia. “Their resources form a huge, timely, and relevant corpus of useful information produced by and for their ORCID community and are an asset for all organizations seeking to utilize ORCID to reduce the administrative burden in the United States and beyond.”
Since 2014 when the ORCID global consortia program officially launched, 28 consortia have helped to facilitate widespread ORCID adoption around the world. Seventy-five percent of ORCID member organizations are part of the 28 consortia. The consortium model provides a cost-effective way for groups of non-profit and/or government organizations to join ORCID. And since consortia foster communities of practice, members can more effectively pool their resources and share knowledge, making integration with the ORCID Registry and promotion of ORCID adoption within its member organizations much more effective.
Regardless of the size of a consortium, or how long the consortium has been operating, both the researchers and the organizations within the consortium can benefit from its community of practice. As one of ORCID’s core values is openness, the sharing of resources, such as the online resources available from Lyrasis, is encouraged not just within their own consortium, but also across the global network of consortia.
In the US, all non-profit institutions that are not part of the federal government are welcome to join the ORCID US Community consortium led by Lyrasis. US federal agencies and Department of Energy-affiliated organizations may join the US Government ORCID Consortium, led by the US Department of Energy Office of Science and Technical Information (OSTI).
Though ORCID consortia members enjoy discounted membership fees relative to direct members, many of them tell us that it is the benefit of participating in a community of practice that has provided concrete value to their organizations— accelerated adoption of ORCID in their communities. This is true whether you join an existing consortium or form a new one.
Visit our ORCID for Consortia pages you’re interested in learning more.
Contributors
Sheila Rabun is the Program Leader for Persistent Identifier Communities at Lyrasis. She has worked in the academic library field since 2010, with a focus on digital workflows, agile project management, communicating technical information to diverse audiences, and advocating for interoperability in cultural heritage, research, and scholarly communication ecosystems. Learn more about Sheila at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1196-6279.
Paolo Gujilde is the ORCID US Community Specialist at Lyrasis. He specializes in the areas of collection strategies, scholarly communications, and equity, diversity and inclusion in libraries and knowledge management. Learn more about Paolo at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9758-5740.
Paloma Marín-Arraiza is the Engagement Manager for Global Consortia. In this role, she manages the consortia group and supports ORCID consortia worldwide, with a special focus in Europe and Brazil to develop new and existing integrations and workflows and to promote ORCID adoption. She holds a degree in physics, a master’s degree in scientific information and communication, and a PhD in information science.
Brian Minihan is the Engagement Lead for Global Consortia. In his role, he supports community adoption, fostering development, and executing strategic goals of ORCID consortia, primarily in Asia Pacific and North America, for the ORCID Engagement Team.
Brian previously held the role of Scholarly Communications Librarian at Hong Kong Baptist University, has an M.A. in Asia Pacific Studies from the University of San Francisco, an M.L.S. from San Jose State University and speaks Mandarin Chinese.
