ORCID was founded on principles of openness, transparency, inclusion, and collaboration. These principles define our organizational culture, focus our passion, and guide everything we do, from community engagement to staff training to governance.
ORCID has a broad user and member community. Our more than 6.5 million users are from every country in the world, while our 1,000+ members are from over 40 countries and every sector of the research community. We need deep engagement from this community in order to succeed, which means that we must be inclusive.
We are a fully virtual organization, with staff in 12 countries speaking at least as many languages, to help us understand local challenges and provide appropriate support for implementation. We work actively to live and breathe inclusiveness in how we work, actively engaging within and across communities, and doing lots and lots of listening.
Community engagement also includes governance. We have a Board of about 15 Directors from member organizations as well as up to two researchers who need not be aligned with a member organization. Our Directors are driven first and foremost by the ORCID mission, and they represent a variety of stakeholders, have credibility in their sector of the community and beyond, and are able to contribute to our development through personal and organizational knowledge, as well as through their networks of influence.
Our Board is, per our bylaws, majority non-profit, and to ensure inclusive representation we seek balance by region, community sector, research discipline, skills, and demographics. This balancing act is carried out by our Nominating Committee, who have the task of creating an election slate from among many highly-qualified nominees.
To ensure the deep engagement we need to achieve our vision, we ask our Board Directors to commit to attending three in-person meetings each year. This can be costly, given the global scope of both our Board membership and meeting locations, which may hinder prospective candidates from indicating their interest in serving. We have always reimbursed attendance costs for our researcher Directors and, this year, the Board has decided to create a Board Meeting Attendance Fund to reduce barriers to participation for member-affiliated Directors who need financial support.
We encourage you to consider participating in our governance! You can nominate yourself or (with their permission) someone else from an ORCID member organization who you consider to be qualified for the role. More information about our elections and the nominations process is available here. Nominations are due by 1 August.