Pilot stage - initial findings are in

We have just come to the end of our pilot and it's proved a very interesting and useful exercise in preparing us for full implementation. As of 17th November 2014, we had 61 ORCID iDs listed in PURE and 48 responses to our survey. Very encouraging for such a short pilot!

These are some of the lessons that we have learnt from the pilot:

• The Create and Add ORCID iD options in PURE do work but not every researcher found them easy to use. We will need to provide more guidance in the full implementation.
• Many researchers, but not all, recognise the value of ORCID iDs as a unique identifier and would recommend an ORCID iD to their colleagues.
• It is more difficult to convince researchers as to the advantages of adding/creating their ORCID iD in PURE than it is of having an ORCID iD.
• There is an expectation from some researchers that PURE and ORCID are directly linked, e.g. that one will populate the other.
• It is only the iD that our pilot was really concerned with but researchers were unsure whether they should complete an ORCID profile or not.
• If we want to increase the uptake of iDs by PGR students we will need to consider messages/information specifically targeted at them.
• Research administrators can play a key role in encouraging their researchers to create/add ORCID iDs into PURE.

We plan to feedback to our pilot departments to thank them for their input and give them a brief summary of how the pilot went in their department. We also need to award a personalised ORCID mug to our prize draw winner!

The pilot has given us lots of ideas for our full implementation which we are now expecting to launch in January 2015.

Even though the pilot is officially over, we continue to see a slow but steady increase in the number of ORCID iDs in PURE. We have also seen a significant rise in the number of iDs with a york.ac.uk email address recorded on ORCID over the last few months (200 back in June to over 400 now). It would be nice to think that we are starting to make an impact but there must be other influences at work.