Last year we launched the Research Information Platform Engagement (RIPEN) project, which brings together a number of projects and themes we have been working on since our launch, including researcher control, authentication, and auto-updates. The project relates to all four of our core strategies:
- Improving researcher workflows. Allowing researchers to authenticate once and ensure that their ORCID record is updated
- Developing a robust information infrastructure. Extending systems and workflows with project partners to establish clear workflows
- Developing strategic relationships. Building relationships with key partners to extend RIPEN into the community
- Increasing trusted assertions. Improving data quality and transparency with a simplified flow for making assertions to ORCID records
RIPEN aims to reduce the technical burden of integrating authenticated ORCID iDs into workflows, while streamlining the process for researchers. At the same time, we are introducing better visibility of the source of information on ORCID records to clarify who added the data, and whether they are the original source or acting on behalf of another organization.
Since our last update, we have made good progress, proving and testing the RIPEN workflow internally, using our own customer relationship system system (Salesforce) to assess the feasibility of using JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) to enable permission-sharing between ORCID members. All Board and ORCID staff members participated in the pilot, which used our new “Assert-o-Matic” service to update their ORCID records with an assertion of their affiliation with ORCID, as shown below.
Now that we have proved out the concept internally, we are moving to the next stage of the project — and engaging with our community to collaboratively test out the approach in a variety of workflows. We are delighted to be partnering with the following organizations in this second phase:
- Airiti (Taiwan) – publishing workflows; asserting works
- SABINET (South Africa) – publishing workflows; asserting works
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (US) – research resources workflows; asserting use of facilities
- Altum (US) – funder workflows; asserting awards
- ePIC (Europe) – research institution workflows; asserting affiliations
- RAiD (Australia) – research activity workflows; asserting project and activity IDs.
Together, we will be developing and testing the streamlined assertion mechanism in partner systems and workflows with up to five of their customers. Partners will also help us analyze the technical and financial feasibility of implementing RIPEN across our global community.
We will be back with another progress report later this year. In the meantime, if you are interested in learning more about the RIPEN project, please contact us at [email protected].
