ORCID mug prize draw winner!

In our second prize draw a fantastic customised ORCID mug was won by Judith Winters from Internet Archaeology. Congratulations to Judith and we hope she is happy with her new mug.

But don't worry, there is still time to enter our next draw for an customised ORCID mug. Just complete our online survey at www.york.ac.uk/orcid/

ORCID and York at DigiFest 2015 and UKSG 2015

Back on the 9th March, Janette Colclough from the York ORCID project joined Verena Weigert from Jisc to give an update on the project to attendees at the Jisc Digital Festival 2015. The presentation from the event is available from the Jisc website (Hint: under "Uncovering research - what's the standard?").

But don't worry if you couldn't make DigiFest; Janette will be giving further updates on the projects at York and the other participating UK institutions at the UKSG 38th Annual Conference in Glasgow, on 31st March and 1st April. The session will be repeated twice as part of breakout group C, under the title "Distinguishing ourselves: experiences of ORCID iD implementation and the Jisc-ARMA pilot".

The 'Big Five-OO'

This week we reached over 500 ORCID iDs in Pure!
It's a fairly arbitrary target, but everyone likes a round number. It also happens to work out at almost exactly 35% of our academic and research staff population - not quite as round a number but none-the-less an admirable target in it's own right.

Disaster averted

At the start of the year ORCID announced the new version of their API. For reasons clearly articulated on a recent post on the ORCID blog, ORCID made the decision to not actively support older versions of the API after their 'sunset date'. This change of API has caused some agitation at our end. As our implementation of ORCID is very much based around our CRIS - Pure - making sure that this continues to work effectively with the API is essential for the smooth running of our project. For a while it looked like we might have to go a period of time in which we couldn't generate ORCID iDs through Pure, or even add existing iDs to Pure. Experience shows that it doesn't take much disruption in service to undo a lot of good work in promoting that service in the first place.
Responding to a change in API is not an easy business when using a large and 'business-critical' system like Pure. Atira - the developers of Pure - have to make the necessary changes for their next version release, putting it into an already busy update schedule. Once this new update is launched it needs to be installed on our test servers and tested before we can make it live. A system like Pure has a number of modules used by many different people in different ways for different purposes, many of which are critical, so testing has to be thorough and the system can't be made live until we are absolutely sure that there will be no nasty surprises. In short, the process can't be rushed and there is no way that we will have the next release of Pure (4.21.0) live by the time active support for the older ORCID API ceases. 
But, thanks have to go to Atira who have come to our rescue by launching an intermediate release of Pure (4.20.X) which uses the updated ORCID API but which we can implement without the extensive testing needed when implementing a whole new release. The changeover hasn't happened quite yet but from the testing we've done it looks like the ORCID functionality will continue seamlessly without the users noticing any change. Panic over. Relax.

Struggling to keep up with demand

We have encountered a small technical hitch due to the high number of York staff all trying to register for an ORCID iD at the same time. The high volume of calls to the ORCID website from within PURE led to system problem and PURE had to be restarted.
It's back working as normal and as the volume of requests normalises we aren't expecting to encounter the same problem again.
Looking at the positive, the fact that we have a high volume of initial uptake is very encouraging.

Full launch across the University!

The roll-out of ORCID across University of York has begun in earnest with an email from the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research asking all research staff to sign up for an iD or add their existing iDs to Pure. 
But the hard work doesn't end here. We will be looking a the uptake of ORCID and getting questions and feedback from researchers to make sure we are providing the information, systems, and support that researchers need.

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.