[Open-access] ORCiD and Libraries

[Thomas Krichel]

  Vignoli Michela writes

> Are there good alternatives to ORCID?

  The issue of author identification is very complicated. ORCID tries
  to attack all facets at the same time. This implies constructing a
  complicated, expensive, proprietary, and monopolistic
  system. Ultimately it will help to further cement the stranglehold
  of the publishing industry over scholarly communication. It's
  puzzling to me why any open access advocate would promote it.

  As I pointed in an earlier mail here, I worked on author
  claiming. This is one aspect of author identification, albeit an
  important one. An open system would allow for institutions to
  collaborate on author identification, having that problem taken care
  of.

  In the late 2000s I built an interdisciplinary version of the RePEc
  Author Service, called AuthorClaim. I started on this before
  ORCiD. The main problem in building AuthorClaim is open access to
  bibliographic data. There are some reusable datasets but overall
  coverage is sketchy. The massive occurrence of certain names is less
  af a problem than one may think because it is possible to throw
  machine learning algorithms at the problem even at the time
  registrants wade through a bunch of proposed documents.

  Needless to say I don't have the propaganda resources of the
  publishing industry. AuthorClaim is working, it is open access but
  largely unused. I have not done active development on it in the most
  recent years but I would welcome collaborators who could take it
  over.

  Don't hesitate to contact my off-list about this.

> And is there a paper or something highlighting the pros and cons for
> using the one or the other?

  The best theoretical summary of the issue I have seen was
  a talk by Geoff Bilder at this meeting

https://conceptweblog.wordpress.com/conferences/

  I had the great fortune to be in the audience. The link to the
  podcast is broken. Maybe you can contact NYIT to ask where it went.

--

  Cheers,

  Thomas Krichel                  http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                                              skype:thomaskrichel