AUSTRALIA – Forty institutions join researcher identifier system
17 February 2016
Forty of Australia’s major research institutions have joined forces in a consortium to adopt the global Open Researcher and Contributor ID, or ORCID, system in the hope of lifting the visibility of ground-breaking discoveries made by Australia’s 47,000 researchers.
By making available a unique 12 digit identifier for every researcher, ORCID enables institutions and researchers to have their work tracked anywhere in the world.
Along with the new Source IP patents database, the Australian initiative, launched on 15 February, will also make it easier for Australian industry to search for relevant researcher expertise.
Australian research organisations – including 36 universities, the Heart Research Institute, CSIRO, the Australian Research Council, and the National Health and Medical Research Council – joined the Australian ORCID Consortium.
ORCID provides a unique number to a researcher, enabling them to maintain a consolidated record of all their research activity throughout their career.
“This is a tremendously important initiative for researchers and for the nation,” said Universities Australia Chief Executive Belinda Robinson.
“By bringing together a researcher’s intellectual property – patents, research studies, publications and grants – into one place, regardless of where they’re employed or where they live, the visibility and profile of their work is greatly elevated.”
ORCID is a global not-for-profit organisation created in 2010, which solves the problem of name ambiguity in research by creating a registry with a unique identifier for each researcher.
Global challenge
Worldwide many researchers and scholars face an ongoing challenge of distinguishing their research activities from those of others with similar names. The ORCID system enables them to easily and uniquely attach their identity to research objects such as datasets, equipment, articles, media stories, citations, experiments, patents and notebooks.
As researchers collaborate across disciplines, institutions and borders, they must interact with an increasing number and diversity of research information systems. Entering data over and over again can be time-consuming, and often frustrating.
ORCID creates and maintains a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. It claims to be unique in its ability to reach across disciplines, research sectors and national boundaries.
It describes itself as “a hub that connects researchers and research through the embedding of ORCID identifiers in key workflows, such as research profile maintenance, manuscript submissions, grant applications, and patent applications”.
ORCID provides both a registry, to obtain a unique identifier and manage a record of activities, and a way of enabling systems to talk to each other and recognise and authenticate identifiers.
Organisations can become members of ORCID to link their records to ORCID identifiers, update ORCID records and receive updates from ORCID, and register their employees and students for ORCID identifiers.
Consortium launched
The Australian ORCID Consortium was launched at the Australian National University by Senator Zed Seselja, representing the Minister for Education and Training Simon Birmingham.
“Universities Australia has been heavily involved in the development of this initiative because we recognise the importance of maximising the impact of Australian research,” Robinson said.
“Australia’s universities are seizing every opportunity to make their world-leading research and innovations more accessible to industry and the broader community, and adopting ORCID is a critical part of this effort.”
The Australian Access Federation will provide support for the Australian ORCID Consortium to maximise the benefits of ORCID in Australia.
The establishment of the consortium was facilitated by Universities Australia, the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australasian Research Management Society, the Council of Australian University Librarians, the Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology, the Australian National Data Service and the Australian Access Federation.
Internationally, ORCID now has nearly two million live IDs. In several countries, consortia, including government bodies as partners, are already operating at a national level to implement ORCID.
For example, in Italy, 70 universities and four research centres are collaborating under the auspices of the Conference of Italian University Rectors and the National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research Institutes in a project implemented by Cineca, a not-for-profit consortium representing the universities, research institutions, and the Ministry of Education.
Journals, publishers and other services have also included ORCID in their workflows or databases. These reportedly include theJournal of Neuroscience, Springer Publishing, the Hindawi Publishing Corporation and Europe PubMed Central.
Source: http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20160217192636258