Technical Session on Persistent Identifiers for Researchers and Organisations
As the ways to ensure interoperability among different research information management systems get explored, there is an increasing awareness of the need for persistent author and organisation identifiers (see for instance the "Entities and Identities in Research Information Systems" contribution recently delivered at CRIS2012 Conference in Prague). At the same time a growing number of presentations for potential solutions to this need -such as ORCID and national author identifier systems such as NAMES in the UK- are being scheduled in every related event that is being held nowadays (eg ORCID presentation at Open Repositories 2012 by Simeon Warner, NAMES presentation at OR2012 by Amanda Hill or ORCID presentation at the euroCRIS CERIF TG meeting by Ed Pentz).
As the time for planned ORCID launch approaches, interest on how the actual standard implementation will be scheduled keeps steaming up. Even if little information is available so far for universities to purposefully engage in early implemantation, there is a wide awareness of ORCID specifically being a very good opportunity for applying such persistent identification standard and therefore a subdued interest in taking part in its rolling out.
No national system for author persistent identification is currently available in Spain. Many institutions are actually using internal ID codes, but these local solutions won't allow system interoperability beyond institutional borders and are thus insufficient. A working group on author persistent identifiers was promoted and funded three years ago by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) in order to analyze and provide specifications for a national author ID system, but its work was discontinued once it became evident that ORCID was providing an international approach that was perceived as the best one to deal with the issue. FECYT is nevertheless operating the Normalised Curriculum Vitae (CVN) Project -that was discussed in previous GrandIR sessions on CRIS/IR interoperability- which collects author information from institutional RIM systems in order to provide them updated CVs in every possible official format. This specific national project could also greatly benefit from ORCID implementation at participating institutions.
In order to provide a forum for sharing ideas on and interest about ORCID implementation, GrandIR is aiming to shortly organise a new technical session on author identifiers in Barcelona (see previous GrandIR debate sessions here). This session would host an invited ORCID presentation and provide an opportunity for interaction with local stakeholders interested in early ORCID implementation, as well as a chance to examine the role of national author identification systems (such as the Dutch DAI or the NAMES project in the UK) within the global approach to the issue provided by ORCID. Having a round table for discussion is perceived to be as important as presentations themselves, so the technical session will assign enough time for Q&A time and for discussing the best potential approach to ORCID implementation.
Temptative technical session programme - author and organisation identifiers
- Session introduction (Jordi Serrano, UPC & Consol García Gómez, ORCID Outreach WG & UPC)
- The way ahead for a global initiative for author and organisation identifier system: ORCID (Martin Fenner, Hannover Medical School & ORCID Outreach WG)
- The NAMES Project for Author ID in the UK: how should national projects coexist with ORCID? (Amanda Hill, NAMES Project)
- A Spanish National Author ID System? Previous Work and Integration with the CVN Project (Izaskun Lacunza, Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, FECYT)
- A commercial view on author IDs: the ResearcherID and beyond (Philip Purnell, Thomson Reuters BCN)
- Round table on Author ID implementation and business models
Venue: Polytechnical University Catalonia (UPC), Campus Nord, Barcelona, Spain
Date (temptative): Sep 6th
