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CSP Criteria: Discovery Systems

ORCID encourages all providers of scholarly services to integrate with our Registry AND to become an official ORCID Certified Service Provider (CSP). Certification is a free service for scholarly service providers to increase the visibility and trustworthiness of services and products.

Benefits of Certification

Discovery Systems

This guide outlines ways in which a typical discovery system may integrate with the ORCID API, walking through the processes of receiving authenticated ORCID iDs from researchers, retrieving data from ORCID records, allowing contributions and other data to be added to ORCID records, and updating items which they have previously added to ORCID records.  Examples of discovery systems include abstracting and indexing databases, citation databases, metadata aggregators, search engines and publishing platforms.

Notes

  • Not every process will apply to every system, so not every criterion will need to be met for certification, however systems that do support a given process must meet the relevant criteria in order to be certified. 
  • These criteria are based on extensive analysis conducted on industry best practices for workflows used by various scholarly service provider systems,  followed by public review and input from the ORCID community. In order to obtain the best possible value from an ORCID integration it is recommended that all applicable criteria are met, not just the ones that must be met for certification.
  • In this document, the terms “MUST”, “SHOULD” and “MAY” follow the definitions specified in RFC 2119

Certified discovery system integrations MUST:

  • Collect authenticated users’ ORCID iDs, and their permissions
  • Use the ORCID ID and names contained in ORCID records to help users find content that belongs to them.
  • Enable researchers to find their contributions, person identifiers and/or other information in the discovery service, and add them to their ORCID record
  • Use a distinct API client ID to any other integration the organization may offer
  • Keep the items added to ORCID records up to date with changes
  • Discovery systems that create their own researcher profiles (or author clusters) MUST provide an option to researchers that continues to update the researcher’s ORCID record over time as new information becomes available
  • Document how platform/import wizard users can use the ORCID functionality offered, in training and promotional materials

Certified discovery system integrations MAY:

  • Publicly display authenticated ORCID iDs per ORCID’s brand guidelines only

Overview

Within the ORCID context, a discovery service enables a wide range of end users to find and obtain insights about scholarly information. A discovery system offers ORCID integration functionality to end users using the ORCID Member API with the Vendor’s own credentials and generally does not provide any member-specific functionality to ORCID member organizations.  

This document outlines ways in which a typical discovery service integration must integrate with the ORCID API in order to become an ORCID Certified Service Provider.  It describes the processes of receiving authenticated ORCID iDs from researchers, retrieving data from ORCID records, and adding researchers’ achievements & contributions to ORCID records.

Certification Criteria

  1. Collect authenticated researchers’ ORCID iD and permissions

Systems MUST obtain authenticated ORCID iDs and the relevant permission to read from/write to their users’ ORCID records. This requires users to sign in to ORCID from within the integration. It is also essential to provide information to users about why they are authenticating ORCID iDs and why this is beneficial to them. ORCID integrations MUST NOT allow manual entry or editing of ORCID iDs by users.

Obtaining authenticated iDs can be achieved in two ways:

  • By providing a hyperlinked ORCID-branded button for obtaining authenticated ORCID iDs and permissions. Using the ORCID button consistently (and in keeping with ORCID’s brand guidelines) helps ensure that researchers associate it with being asked to securely provide their iD, which in turn builds trust in ORCID as a reliable identifier. 
  • Being integrated into the ORCID registry as an import wizard, collecting authenticated ORCID iDs and permissions (also referred to as an ORCID ‘search and link wizard’ — see below).
  1. Use data from ORCID records to help your users

Researchers expect the data on their ORCID record to be read and used by other systems, to save them the time and effort of manually reentering the data, and reduce the risk of input errors. 

Systems MUST use the ORCID iD and/or record holder’s name to identify items within their own system that might belong to the user. Systems SHOULD provide the option for the user to clear the search and perform their own search to find their own research outputs, peer reviews, funding items or person identifiers. 

Integrations MAY also retrieve relevant information from ORCID records about the researcher such as names, affiliations, keywords, funding, research resources, works, peer review activity and datasets; and use this to pre-fill their registration/profile, populate forms and update the vendors own system to improve the accuracy and completeness of data. 

  1. Allow researchers’ contributions to be added their ORCID record

Adding contributions to your users’ ORCID records and keeping that data up to date saves researchers time and ensures that data in your system is widely available for re-use in the scholarly communications ecosystem, bringing value to your users.  Information that can be added by discovery systems includes but is not limited to:

  • Works, such as journal articles or datasets
  • Peer review activities
  • Other professional activities
  • Funding information
  • Other scholarly identifiers

Integrators need to ensure that the option to add items to ORCID records is easily accessible and clearly shown to users. The integration functionality MUST allow users to find and select individual items or items in bulk to add to their ORCID record to ensure only correctly attributed data is added. After items have been selected, a summary list of items MUST be shown for final approval by the user to confirm addition to their ORCID record; when confirmed the user’s ORCID record is then updated with the selected items. 

  1. Keep the items added to ORCID records up to date with changes

Discovery systems MUST automatically update existing (i.e. previously added) items in ORCID profiles when updates to the metadata take place within their own system.

  1. Continue to update the researcher’s record over time as new information becomes available

Syncing your own system with the researcher’s ORCID record saves the user the time of having to go through individual steps to add the new items to their ORCID record. Discovery systems that link ORCID IDs with their own researcher profiles or author clusters MUST  provide the option to add any new items that they have associated with the researcher to their ORCID record when they become available.

  1. Use distinct client ID from any other integration the organization may offer

Discovery systems MUST use unique ORCID Member API client credentials, distinct from other integrations that the organization may have with ORCID. ORCID will configure the API credentials differently to ensure that the assertion origin is seen correctly within the ORCID Registry to correctly support the resultant trust markers which show the source of the data written to ORCID records.

  1. Publicly display authenticated ORCID iDs per our brand guidelines

Where possible, discovery systems SHOULD display the researcher’s authenticated ORCID iD against linked content within their own system. When included, ORCID iDs must be displayed as per our brand guidelines. This enables other readers/users to find out more about the authors from their ORCID records in a common and expected manner.

Import Wizards

ORCID Import Wizards (aka Search & link wizards) are discovery systems that may be accessed directly from within the ORCID Registry user interface.  They are made available to researchers from their ORCID record, so they can use them to import information to their records. 

Import wizards have the same set of certification criteria as standard discovery system integrations, with an additional requirement. Discovery System integrations provided by ORCID members which meet these criteria may apply to be integrated into the ORCID registry UI as an Import Wizard.

Certified Import Wizard integrations MUST:

  1. Meet the Discovery Systems CSP Criteria outlined above
  2. Provide a seamless user journey when activated from within the user’s ORCID record

Import Wizards work by allowing researchers who are updating their ORCID profiles to select the wizard from the ‘My ORCID’ section of the ORCID Registry. Upon selection, ORCID prompts the researcher to grant the wizard permission to access and update their record. ORCID then redirects the researcher to a page on the member’s website where they are led through a discovery process, including in the request the context of the researcher’s ORCID ID. Ideally, users are not required to additionally log in to the discovery system. 

Once selection of content belonging to the researcher is completed, the discovery system updates the researcher’s record with information from their system. Typically, the discovery system will retain the ORCID API permissions granted by the user, so that they can continue to update the researcher’s record over time as new information becomes available. 

As Import Wizards links are directly included in the ORCID registry user interface, ORCID needs to ensure that they continue to adhere to a high standard once credentials have been issued. Integrations will be checked every 12 months as per the certification renewal process and if they no longer meet our best practices or do not have reasonable usage levels then ORCID reserves the right to remove them from the registry interface.