[OpenGLAM] ORCID

Mon Jun 2 14:02:49 UTC 2014

Hello,

My first post here; some of you already know me as an active
Wikipedian, but thought I would tell you about another initiative in
which I'm involved, and which is likely to be of interest.

An "Open Research Contributor Identifier" (ORCID; <http://orcid.org>),
is a UID (which can be expressed as a URI) for researchers and other
academic authors. Think of it as a DoI for people. Mine is shown
below.

ORCIDs are as much for researchers and writers in the humanities, as
for those in the sciences.

An ORCID disambiguates people with the same or similar names; and
identifies works by the same author under different names (changes on
marriage, divorce; different spellings or initialisations, etc.) as
being by that one person.

As the website says: "ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven
effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher
identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities
and outputs to these identifiers".

Several journals and publishers, not least Nature, are including ORCID
in their publishing workflows, and institutions are including it in
their staff records system.

Individuals can sign up for an ORCID at <http://orcid.org/> and then
include it in their attribution in their research papers, other
publications, correspondence and stationery. I encourage you and your
colleagues to do so.

Those of you who are Wikipedians/ WIkiemdians can also add your ORCID
to your user page(s) using the "Authorityy control" template.

-- 
Andy Mabbett
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5882-6823
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk