[Open-access] ORCiD and Libraries

Mon Jul 6 15:29:31 UTC 2015

Just thought I'd chuck in my perspective on ORCiD, too, which is very
positive and not at all in alignment with Thomas's. I'm not going to
get involved in an argument: just wanted to signal to anyone not
already familiar with the space that Thomas's perspective is very far
from unanimously held, and in fact could be characterised as far from
mainstream.

-- Mike.

On 6 July 2015 at 15:39, Reimer, Torsten F <t.reimer at imperial.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hello,
>
>> 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.
>
> I'd like to contest that view:
> - ORCID is owned by its members, so academia has a say in how ORCID works.
> - The code is open source.
> - It is publisher agnostic and works on content outside the publishing system.
> - There may be different view on value, but we regard our membership fee as value for money.
> - ORCID already integrates nicely into a lot of systems.
> - It has a role to play in helping authors with reporting and also open access compliance.
>
> This is not to say that one could not imagine a better solution, but ORCID can already play a useful role and it has increasing uptake. Therefore I find the characterisation a little harsh.
>
> Regards,
> Torsten
>
> Dr Torsten Reimer
> Scholarly Communications Officer
> Imperial College London
> Research Office, Level 5, Sherfield Building
> Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2AZ
> Tel: 020 7594 3190  Fax: 020 7594 1265
> http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/researchsupport
> https://twitter.com/torstenreimer
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: open-access [mailto:open-access-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Krichel
> Sent: 06 July 2015 15:09
> To: Vignoli Michela
> Cc: open-access at lists.okfn.org
> Subject: Re: [Open-access] ORCiD and Libraries
>
>
>   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
>
> _______________________________________________
> open-access mailing list
> open-access at lists.okfn.org
> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-access
> _______________________________________________
> open-access mailing list
> open-access at lists.okfn.org
> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-access