[OpenGLAM] ORCID

Mon Jun 2 15:40:34 UTC 2014

On Jun 2, 2014, at 10:02 AM, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:

> "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… http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5882-6823

How ironic because very recently I have been exploring ORCID to a greater degree. 

As Andy said, ORCID’s are unique identifiers for people. If I understand the scope of their purpose correctly, they are intended to unambiguously point to and describe a person. Conceivably they can be included in things like grant submissions, email signatures, and more formal publications all in an effort to allow the reader to grasp the authority of the writer. 

Orcid.org is currently funded by a combination of grant funds and institutional memberships, with the idea of being completely funded by institutional memberships in the future. What does membership get you? Good question. I believe the answer is, full and complete access to the ORCID API which allows identifiers and supplemental information to be created and reported upon programmatically on behalf of others.

Why is the “open” data so stale? I don’t know, but believe me when I say support at orchid.org is responsive.

I very recently attended an ORCID meeting in Chicago. [0] I learned how many institutions, mostly libraries, have been creating identifiers for local constituents. They have had some success, but not complete success. From a author’s point of view, there is some doubt as to why a unique identifier is important for a scholar. (Libraries and other cultural heritage institutions think “authority control”.)

It might be important to distinguish between the growing number of unique identifiers for people (scholars/academics). Some of them are simply keys. Other are more like pointers to named authorities. I’m thinking of VIAF numbers, LC numbers, etc. Then there are things like ResearcherIDs, Scopus identifiers, and ISNIs. From a linked data point of view, all of these identifiers are perfect fruit for the use of OWL and SKOS.

Given an ORCID, it is entirely possible to openly download citations of the author, even without institutional membership. On the other end of these citations are sometimes DOIs where full text can be acquired. See the API documentation. [1]

[0] meeting - https://orcid.org/content/orcid-outreach-meeting-and-codefest-may-2014
[1] API - http://support.orcid.org/knowledgebase/topics/19247-rest-api

—
Eric Lease Morgan
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9952-7800