Update: As of 12 May, the documents are no longer open open for comment. Stay tuned for further updates on the launch of the updated CSP program and an announcement about the Pilot Partners who are working with us to certify, or recertify, their solutions with ORCID under the new criteria!
Service Providers (SPs) that have pre-built ORCID functionality in their products and services enable hundreds of ORCID members to gain value from their membership in the quickest, simplest way, by providing a means to easily integrate ORCID into their local workflows and systems and provide a more consistent user experience for researchers when they encounter ORCID.
Our members frequently ask us which scholarly service providers have the best ORCID-enabled product functionalities when reviewing and selecting new systems to meet their needs. In order to be able to answer these questions objectively, and assure members that the ORCID integrations in services we recommend adhere to best practices, we introduced our Certified Service Provider (CSP) program in 2020.
Currently, in order to be certified, systems must meet basic criteria on how they collect ORCID IDs, and connect with and update ORCID records. Since the program launched, over 20 systems, both open-source and commercial, have been certified, including some of those most frequently used within universities and research institutions.
Workflow-specific certification criteria based on best practices
Now, after running the CSP for more than three years, and talking to multiple service providers and their users, we have learned that best practice in integrating with ORCID extends far beyond the basics of collecting ORCID IDs and connecting with ORCID records. In fact, in order to deliver the most value to its users, the optimal ORCID integration in a service is highly workflow specific. For this reason, we have identified the refinement and upgrade of our CSP program as a priority for ORCID in 2023. Today, we are launching a public consultation period for the revised CSP certification criteria for each of the following workflows:
- Research Information Systems
- Manuscript Submission Systems
- Grant/Facility Submission
- Repository Systems Workflow
The revised certification criteria are based on extensive analysis conducted on industry best practices for the most important workflows used by various scholarly service provider systems integrating with ORCID.
As a community-driven organization, ORCID seeks to work as openly and transparently as possible, therefore we encourage vendors, those responsible for reviewing and selecting vendor systems, workflow experts, users and other interested members of the ORCID community to review and comment on the draft revised certification criteria.
We believe that by providing clear, concise certification criteria via the CSP program, we can help service providers ensure that they are delivering the ORCID integration functionality that their customers expect and require.
Enhanced benefits for CSPs
Certification is a free-of-charge service offered by ORCID, for any integration that meets ORCID’s best practices-based criteria, and as part of the refinement of the CSP program, we are also proposing to provide an enhanced set of benefits to those Service Providers who achieve certification. One key benefit that the upgraded certification program will offer to vendor solutions is greater exposure, via our broad community reach, to potential customers and users who seek reliable, consistent, and convenient solutions. We also welcome feedback on this and other benefits in the document linked below.
We welcome your feedback!
Below are links to the draft documents defining best practice-based certification criteria for the four workflows mentioned above:
- Research Information Systems
- Manuscript Submission Systems
- Grant/Facility Submission
- Repository Systems Workflow
We invite you to leave comments directly in the documents that are of most interest to you. Including your name and affiliation in your comments can be helpful in continuing a dialogue with us about your feedback, so we invite you to do that if you wish. In addition, we welcome feedback on the proposed enhanced benefits of the CSP program:
- The overall details and benefits of the CSP Program
The documents above are open for comment until 12 May 2023. We expect to roll out the improved CSP program by Q3 2023.
