Benefits of our approach

Writing this entry in the gap between our initial pilot stage work and the full implementation of ORCID iDs across the University is a challenge! In many ways, we are still waiting to see if our pathway for academic staff and researchers is an effective one for others to follow. We hope that the following comments are useful to other institutions.

 

• Early indications are that voluntary ORCID iD registration by academic and research staff via an institutional CRIS can show positive results. The very short pilot stage with relatively little active advocacy (see earlier blog entries) resulted in over 70 ORCID iDs recorded in Pure in a short space of time.

• Despite experiencing some technical setbacks ourselves, the implementation of ORCID iD functionality within a CRIS still seems to be a sensible route forward, both in terms of where research staff need to record research outputs and potential future system interoperability options, e.g. in reporting to funders. Using the functionality provided by Pure meant that there was no need to develop a new integration ourselves. It is hoped the York project can feed into the future development of ORCID options in Pure and assist the Pure UK user community.

• Having the back-up of a University policy (in York’s case the Policy on the Publication of Research) is valuable. If nothing else, it illustrates the degree of institutional support for ORCID iDs within the University. The policy also provides a route in for discussion of ORCID with departments and Chairs of Departmental Research Committees.

• If the overall approach is to work and be sustainable, the messages provided to researchers need to be clear and consistent. It is important to consider if different messages may be needed for different user groups. for example, research staff, postgraduate research students, etc.

• For implementation to be successful, there needs to be institutional support at all levels and across the University including the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research, the Library/IT Services/Archives, CRIS staff, and research administrators based in departments.

• In terms of benefits accruing to individual researchers and the University, it is too early to judge what will actually be delivered in terms of efficiency gains and staff time. System interoperability will be a key factor as will the adoption of ORCID iDs by key players such as research councils.

Important lessons learnt

This blog post considers some of the lessons that we have learnt from the project to date and in particular the short pilot exercise that we undertook with 4 departments in Autumn 2014 (see earlier blog post).

Researchers and the name ambiguity problem

In talking to researchers and in responses to the pilot exercise survey, there seems to be a shared recognition of the problems of incorrect assignment of research outputs and the ambiguous nature of names. The ability to “distinguish myself” (chosen as our tagline in initial advocacy work) came top of the perceived benefits of ORCID iDs to individual researchers. There were a number of verbal anecdotes recited concerning misattribution of research outputs. Chairs of Departmental Research Committees appeared to quickly associate ORCID iDs with ideas around citation impact and research profile, both at an individual and departmental level. This is evidenced by the introductory emails that some Chairs of Departmental Research Committees sent out in association with the pilot exercise.

Registration/addition of ORCID iDs via Pure - researchers views

The implementation of ORCID iDs within Pure has consequences not necessarily relating to the perceived benefits of the IDs themselves. Pure is a central system at the University but, like other CRIS, it can be can hold negative associations for individual researchers. It is possible that implementation via a Pure route lessens the number of researchers likely to register for an iD - further investifation is required. It is noticeable that the number of iDs registered to york.ac.uk users increased by approximately 200 during the pilot stage whilst the number of iDs listed on Pure increased by approximately 70 (see also technical aspects below). A small number of respondents to the survey suggested that getting an iD was just an additional bureaucratic burden.

There is some evidence from the pilot exercise survey that although researchers could see the value of ORCID iDs, they could not see the value of creating/adding an iD into Pure. This could be linked to the ORCID profile versus ORCID iD issues covered below but we need to be clearer on what we see as the advantages of this route. It does not seem unreasonable to spell out the advantages of having an ORCID iD in Pure to researchers. It is unfortunate that it was not possible to get a functioning EPrints connector in place (we are still working on this at time of writing) as this would be one illustration of the how the iD would link through to other systems.

ORCID iDs via PURE - technical aspects

Technical issues delayed the progress of the project at a number of stages (see also Technical approaches blog entry). This was disappointing in that we were subsequently unable to reach all of our target outcomes within the JISC-ARMA timescale. Other institutions need to be aware that all technical aspects need to be thoroughly tested ahead of any implementation to make sure that they work as intended. New functionality may have unforeseen requirements. For example, it was anticipated that the changes required to the EPrints connector would be straightforward but the ORCID iD field was initially found not to be indexed and was therefore unavailable to add into the connector (this has now been rectified).

The use of the ORCID iD functionality in Pure also proved to be more problematic for researchers than anticipated. After creating or adding an iD, the user needs to save the changes. Unfortunately, the save option at the foot of the screen was missed by many researchers. On analysis of the pilot survey responses, 10 of the 17 researchers who stated that they had created an iD in Pure had actually failed to save the iD in Pure. A similar issue appears to have applied to those researchers adding an iD into Pure. As a consequence of these issues, the University’s ORCID web page used for full implementation have additional detailed instructions on the ORCID options. A request will be made to Pure to consider a “you have unsaved changes” warning message.

ORCID profile versus ORCID iD

The York pilot exercise highlighted the need for clarity in distinguishing the ORCID profile functionality from the role of ORCID iDs as persistent identifiers - this can be a potential source of confusion. Any institution planning an implementation may wish to consider its position and targets in terms of ORCID iDs and ORCID profiles for constituent user groups.

At York, we needed to clarify our use case for academic and research staff to make it clear that for this group we are actually only interested in the iD element of ORCID. The profile element, at least from an institutional perspective, is being provided by Pure and will made public via the Pure portal (the York Research Database) in due course.

Individual researchers, however, may associate ORCID with its profile functionality, especially as they see the opportunity to add Personal information when they activate their record. This led some researchers in the pilot exercise to assume that they had to develop their ORCID profile. A significant number of researchers expressed their disappointment that Pure did not automatically populate their ORCID record; there currently no interaction between ORCID and Pure in terms of profile content other than the iD. Evidence from pilot strongly suggests that there was an expectation from researchers that one would automatically populate the other.

Postgraduate Research students and support staff - other use cases and workflows

The University of York use case is actually different for staff without a Pure profile (at York this includes support and technical staff) and postgraduate research students (who also do not have a Pure profile). For these users there may be a personal advantage in having both an ORCID iD and an ORCID profile (see above). The ORCID profile functionality provides a useful platform for these users to promote themselves and their research outputs. These factors mean that the messages communicated may need to vary depending on the planned outcomes and the user groups being targeted.

The workflows involved may also be different for these groups. For example, for postgraduate research students it may also be possible to store their ORCID iD within their student record; one option would be to investigate integrating ORCID iDs into the University’s student information system (SITS). In terms of the repository, the White Rose institutions are already investigating the use of ORCID iDs as a required field for deposit into White Rose eTheses Online. It is planned to similarly investigate the possibility of including an ORCID iD field in the direct deposit form for White Rose Research Online.

The importance of partnerships and institutional support

The York project team involved several key teams within the Information Directorate and beyond. The project was led by the Information Directorate’s Research Support team but input from the Digital York team and the Research Strategic and Policy Office (RSPO) was essential to progressing the work. At York, Pure is managed by the RSPO and without their collaboration the project would not have been possible.

From the start, the project had the full support of the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research (PVCR). The PVCR provided a supporting letter for the JISC-ARMA bid and the launch emails for full implementation will be sent out under the PVCR’s name.

The participation of the 4 departments in the pilot exercise should also be acknowledged - the lessons learnt during the pilot exercise should prove invaluable to the full implementation. Of particular note was the importance of the departmental research administrators in certain departments - once administrators were convinced of the value of ORCID iDs they were very willing activists encouraging their researchers to register.

Implementing ORCID at York : a technical perspective

For York’s ORCID pilot project, this is what we said we would do:

Pure is a current research information system (a CRIS) offered as a commercial product by Elsevier. York have been using Pure for several years, and have connected Pure to various internal systems, including those for finance and HR, to provide a single source of data about research activity in York. Open access versions of research outputs can be added to Pure and are sent via a connector to White Rose Research Online (WRRO), our open access repository.

From version 4.18 onwards, Pure has included support for storing and creating ORCID identifiers against a user’s personal profile. For York’s ORCID pilot project we decided to use the built-in ORCID functionality of Pure because a) it is a system every academic member of staff (with a research contract) has to interact with during their working life at York, and b) this provided an out-of-the box solution with no development required. By asking users to create their own identifiers, we also avoided having to develop any local utilities to perform batch creation and ensured users had engaged in what was happening.

What we did

In order to create ORCID identifiers in Pure, we needed to become ORCID members. We signed up for the Creator License as Basic Members (see http://orcid.org/about/membership). For the needs of this project, this license suited us perfectly although if we were to want to do more sophisticated things in future, such as connect multiple systems to ORCID or synchronise data with ORCID, there is a more costly ‘Premium’ Membership.

The Pure integration, in theory, needed only the correct ORCID member credentials and a couple of switches flipping.

ORCID configuration in Pure

In reality it was not quite so straightforward. The ORCID functionality in Pure 4.18x did not work and so we had to wait for an upgrade to version 4.19 for a fix. As Pure is a system which integrates with various business critical systems at York, an upgrade cannot just happen - a set of tests need to be carried out and work needs to be scheduled in with both the suppliers and IT Services at York.

Thanks to the support of our colleagues, we were able to push on with the upgrade speedily and the ORCID functionality was made live in November.

The process of adding an ORCID iD is relatively straightforward. The user must go into their Pure profile and select to either create a new ORCID iD, or add an existing one.

Add or create an ORCID

A check button allows the existing ORCID identifier to be verified.

Add an existing ORCID into Pure

Creating a new ORCID identifier requires three steps:

• a single click in Pure
• receiving an email from ORCID and following the verification link supplied
• entering a password to claim and activate the ORCID iD

For those who wish to make more use of ORCID, creating an account allows them fill out their ORCID profile and to add publications to their ORCID record.

Verification email from ORCID

ORCID also provide access to a sandbox to allow full testing of the functionality without affecting any live systems. All screenshots above have be made in our Pure test system, talking to the ORCID sandbox.

The second step for the project was populating our institutional repository White Rose Research Online (WRRO) with ORCID identifiers in Pure. Clearly, this step could not be taken forward until there were ORCID identifiers in Pure so it was held back until the first stage of the pilot had completed.

The Pure eprints connector sends information to WRRO when there is a full-text attached to a research output and the text has undergone a copyright check by the Library. Within Pure there is a MODS XML metadata record containing information about the research output. An XSLT stylesheet transforms this MODS record in the EPrints XML format required by WRRO. We have local control of this stylesheet and so sending the ORCID identifier to EPrints is made via a simple edit to the transformation. In order to do this, though, we had to request the ORCID identifier be made available in the MODS metadata published by Pure (over which we have no control), something we had not realised needed to be requested. This caused another delay as the availability of the ORCID identifier in the MODS record was released in Pure version 4.20. This version was installed on our test Pure instance in mid December 2014 but, unfortunately, a separate problem broke the EPrints connector, requiring another fix that will be available in January 2015.

At the time of writing, we are confident that the ORCID identifer will seamlessly be added to the metadata supplied to WRRO for new outputs once the latest version is available. To retrospectively apply ORCID identifiers will require a re-synchronisation of data between the systems at a later point.

Implementation Issues

As noted above, we hit some technical issues during the testing of both the ORCID functionality and the connector to WRRO. Issues are part and parcel of running systems, but their impact on a project with a short timescale can be significant and have prevented us from delivering the full ORCID iD to WRRO integration on time.

Other issues to note include the fact that our implementation of Pure at York does not provide accounts for PhD students, and so separate communications will be needed for that target group. For the pilot, students were encouraged to register for an ORCID iD on the ORCID web site, leaving us no mechanism for tracking how many ORCID iDs had been created (something we can see in Pure for academics and research staff).

A small, but significant, issue in the usability of Pure led to a number of people not saving their profile record containing the ORCID identifier. This led to these people being assigned an ORCID iD but the identifier not being stored in Pure.

In creating an ORCID iD via Pure, the user is allowed to alter the email used (something we would not recommend) but the user has no control over the format of their name. Pure already has the ability for a user to specify a preferred format, for example to exclude a middle name or provide a commonly used short version of their forename, but this is not used for ORCID iD creation, meaning that a user would need to edit this information in ORCID, adding an extra step.

A separate issue is that Pure is an internal system whose public front-end is delivered by the York Research Database, an implementation of the Pure portal software. Having the ORCID in Pure doesn’t automatically mean it displays in the public view and needs to be separately requested. At the current time, then, ORCID iDs created in Pure are not publicly exposed.

Future Improvements

Running the pilot project has allowed us to explore the functionality offered by Pure for creating ORCID iDs. After the initial false start, this is now in place and working. Out of the work on the pilot, we are feeding back three suggestions to Elsevier on the basic functionality of the connector:

• The ‘Save’ option in PURE is easily missed and it’s prominence should be improved.
• Pure should use the user’s preferred name format in creating the ORCID identifier.
• Provide a better error message when a user tries to create an ORCID when they already have one, and a link to the ORCID site.

Unhelpful error message if an ORCID already exists for that user.

Including the ORCID identifier in the York Research Database would be a quick win and should be pursued.

Better support for PhD students at York is needed, either through their being able to access Pure or by making it easier for them to create and record an ORCID iD with the University.

The potential for synchronising outputs between PURE and ORCID needs to be more fully explored. Some users have been keen on this, but it raises some questions, for example over where the canonical source of publication information is and of what ORCIDs ‘added-value’ services should be.

It remains to be seen what more we can do with ORCID iDs, but some ideas that have already been discussed include using them within identity management systems at York and providing simplified mechanisms to assist academics in moving institutions.

Reflecting on the users and use case

As we move towards full implementation, now seems a suitable time to reflect on our project to date. This is the first of a series of blog posts which look back at our initial aims and what we have achieved this far.

Underlying principles

The guiding principle of ORCID iD implementation at York is the benefit that it brings to researchers; an ORCID iD is owned by the researcher and not by any one institution. This sense of researcher ownership and the use of ORCID iDs to benefit researchers rather than regulate them is seen as vital to successful implementation in a University such as York. The University should then subsequently benefit from the correct attribution of research outputs and the potential for sharing of information between systems.

Benefits to researchers

 

The key benefits of ORCID iDs to researchers are seen as those articulated by ORCID itself and based on the iD as a solution to the name ambiguity problem and the need for accurate assignment of research outputs. It is anticipated that these benefits will grow through time as ORCID iDs become more widely adopted by other institutions, publishers and research funders. These themes were used in the project as the core advocacy messages. ORCID iD registration for research staff is made available via the University’s CRIS (Pure); the system used by research staff to record their research outputs.

Institutional policy

This emphasis on individual registration is backed by institutional policy. This takes the form of a section of the University’s Policy on the Publication of Research which was approved during the course of the project. The section of the Policy relating to the Preparation publications refers to the use of a standard author identifier when submitting author details for a publication, where this option is given by the publisher. The guidance provided with the Policy endorses the use of ORCID iDs for this purpose.

Benefits to the institution

The combination of researcher sign-up, institutional policy and the technical infrastructure provided by Pure, is anticipated to deliver benefits to the University. The correct attribution of research outputs to University of York researchers is essential in terms of tracking research outputs, reporting to funders and benchmarking against other institutions. These reporting requirements are likely to continue to increase in the foreseeable future.

Benefits moving forward

It is anticipated that the benefits of ORCID iD implementation will grow over time. It is hoped that ORCID iDs will save administrative time for researchers and support staff by ensuring correct and accurate transfer of information between systems. ORCID iDs have the potential to be a key element in the future interoperability of research systems, both internal and external. These future benefits are dependent, however, on the wider uptake of ORCID iDs in the UK and internationally, and on their adoption by key players such as research councils.

Lessons learnt

The original project use case as described above is focused on academic and research staff with Pure profiles. The separate Important lessons learnt blog post (coming soon) will include information on how we are looking to develop use cases and workflows for postgraduate research students and for staff without Pure profiles.

ORCID pilot prize draw winner!

Congratulations to Rita Faria (Centre for Health Economics) who won our ORCID pilot prize draw. Rita goes away with an attractive ORCID mug, customised with her very own iD.

Missed out on the chance to win a customised ORCID mug? Don't worry, complete our online survey by 27th February 2015 for another chance to win: www.york.ac.uk/orcid