2015 was an exciting year. We were awarded a major grant, doubled in size from 10 staff in four countries to 21 in ten countries, and made substantial gains in adoption and technical offerings (peer review! SSO! so much more!).
So, what are our plans for the coming year? In 2016 we will focus on three key priority areas:
Sustainability
We continue to work to become financially self-sustaining, meaning that all operational costs are derived from membership fees. To get there, our team will be laser-focused on meeting earned revenue targets and improving the quality and quantity of integrations.
Doug Wright, our Director of Membership, is leading the charge to ensure we reach our sustainability goals. I am pleased to announce that Rob Peters is moving into a position as Director of Technology Operations, responsible for day-to-day management of the ORCID registry. Laura Paglione is taking on the role of Director of Strategic Initiatives, and will be investigating longer-term organizational policy and technology opportunities. To support strategic planning, we have recast our steering groups in favor of specific cross-cutting topical working groups, and Laura will be working with Josh Brown, Director of ORCID, EU and our lead on the THOR project, to start up groups focused on organization identifiers, person citations, and access management.
Leadership
We also need to continue to build momentum for adoption and integration. That means participation in industry initiatives, presentations at key conferences, clarifying ORCID messaging, and promoting the “how and why” of ORCID.
Front and center here is Alice Meadows, who is taking on an expanded role as Director of Community Engagement and Support. She will continue to manage our communications program, including responsibility for messaging, our meetings calendar, and the ORCID Ambassadors, and will also now lead the member services team, ensuring that we maintain our high standards in help desk and API support, as well as developing documentation and tools that include both the technology and communications components needed to implement ORCID. This will include an exciting new program to support the community in developing effective integrations — more information shortly. Alice also will be starting up topical working groups on training and on implementation best practices.
Organizational Maturity
ORCID is maturing out of our start-up phase. As we grow, we need to support scalability of our operations. We need to continue to improve our internal processes, embrace enterprise technology, and ensure community participation by updating our governance (more on that in a later post). At the same time, we need to keep it fresh and fun to enable agility and creativity.
Heading up this area will be Claudia Soriano, who in 2015 was promoted to Director of Operations. She will be responsible for launching a number of back-office initiatives, and success there will mean everything works more smoothly!
Please join me in congratulating Rob, Laura, Alice, and Claudia on their new positions.
The ORCID team looks forward to working with all of you in 2016 and beyond.
Happy New Year!