Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) is a leading research institute in science and technology information and has been a member of ORCID since 2013, a year after ORCID’s founding. As a leader in open science and technology infrastructure, it has shown a longtime commitment to ORCID’s sustainability in the research ecosystem.
More recently, KISTI has demonstrated a commitment to enhancing interconnected research infrastructure by bridging the international and Korean science communities. One of its sponsored initiatives is integrating ORCID into the Korea DOI Center (KDC), which serves as Korea’s only DOI registration agency (RA). KDC contributes to enhancing the influence of researchers by promoting permanent access and citation of domestic research content.
In 2023, KDC added the ORCID Auto-update, which is an ORCID integration meant to better serve its research community by automatically adding the research output information of the relevant DOI to researchers’ ORCID records with researchers’ permissions. At ORCID, we have made sure that researchers are always in control of their records, which includes not only what data gets added to their records and by whom, but the visibility of that data once it’s in the record. When a DOI is registered with KDC, the ORCID Auto-update function is provided. That is, KDC will let researchers know via their ORCID Inbox (accessible once they are logged into their record) when they have publications with their ORCID iD included as a part of the DOI registration metadata. KDC then requests permission from the researcher to add that work to the ORCID record. A researcher’s work will only be added once they have granted the organization permission to do so.
After permissions are granted, whenever a new work associated with the researcher’s ORCID iD is found in KDC’s system, the publication metadata will be automatically flown to the corresponding researcher’s ORCID record.
“Enter once, re-use often”
Auto-updates are just one way that ORCID can save researchers time and reduce administrative burden. ORCID created the slogan Enter once, re-use often to communicate this principle of time and energy saving.
When research outcome information and researcher information are automatically linked, it is easier for researchers to manage research output history, demonstrating transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their contributions, (and their affiliations). By doing so, it also promotes visibility of domestic research results to international scientific communities.
But that’s not all. With a more connected research infrastructure, validated information can be further re-used by different systems that integrate with ORCID, which increases trust within the whole research ecosystem.
Successful outcomes in an interconnected research environment
Researchers in Korea and elsewhere in the region are starting to grant permission to KDC at an increasing rate. IORCID’s database alone currently shows that nearly 72,000 active researcher and contributor records are associated with Korea, which accounts for the 5th largest number across the Asian region. This shows great potential for reaching more interconnectivity in the research ecosystem in Korea through the partnership between KDC and ORCID.
Additionally, Korean publishers are starting to collect authenticated ORCID iDs and make them a part of DOI registration metadata. Widespread adoption of persistent identifiers (PIDs) like ORCID is critical to the success of trustworthy research infrastructure, which promises to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery by facilitating information sharing, reducing inequities in research outputs, and enabling reproducibility.
When a PID-provider such as a DOI registration agency works hand-in-hand with ORCID, the PID-provider for people, it allows for the possibility of greater collaboration amongst researchers, which strengthens research and the overall research community.
Of course, ORCID works with a variety of PID providers, both international or more regionally-focused, in order to create an infrastructure that is able to provide a more trusted, resilient research infrastructure. It is vital that research infrastructure providers work closely together to ensure our products and services work seamlessly.
Now that KDC has integrated with ORCID, the agency will be better able to promote excellent domestic research results globally and serve the entire research community. For more about what the Asia Pacific region is doing to encourage PID use, visit the blog As Local As Necessary, As International As Possible.
