Cool Toys pics of the day: ORCID & ResearcherID

ORCID (Open Researcher Contributor Identification Initiative):

science.thomsonreuters.com/orcid/

 

ORCID is going to be a tool to help create a unique author identity

for science researchers. In their words:

 

"Name ambiguity and attribution are persistent, critical problems

imbedded in the scholarly research ecosystem. The ORCID Initiative

represents a community effort to establish an open, independent

registry that is adopted and embraced as the industry’s de facto

standard. Our mission is to resolve the systemic name ambiguity, by

means of assigning unique identifiers linkable to an individual's

research output, to enhance the scientific discovery process and

improve the efficiency of funding and collaboration."

 

There is already a researcher identification / registration /

disambiguation community tool available at:

 

ResearcherID:

www.researcherid.com/

 

It has been being being heavily promoted by most of the open science

advocates I know for a couple years now.

 

Nature Network:

network.nature.com/blogs/tags/researcherid

 

FriendFeed:

www.google.com/search?q=researcher+ID+site:friendfeed.com...

 

To have a unique author identity is considered critical to any

possible success in the open science movement (resolving the fear of

loss of control of your intellectual property) and as an essential

type of tool for all researchers. It offers clarification of who is

which author with the same initials and name writing on different

topics, as well resolving the problem of which articles are written

under different versions of someone's name.

 

For example, my most significant article was published under a variant

of my name and cannot be found if searching the name I have used for

publishing for the past 30 years. I can register at ResearchID and

then through the extension in Orcid claim the article as having been

coauthored by me. Then if people search my author ID (which is unique)

instead of my name (which is not very unique no matter what format

you use) what you discover is only those articles really by me, and

ALL of those articles I have claimed are by me.

 

There are similar tools competing for this role - OpenID and

ContributorID. OpenID is serving the broader Web, not specifically the

research science community, and is collaborating with the US

government. ContributorID is associated with CrossRef, and I am not

sure if it ever really got off the ground. ResearcherID and ORCID are

both from Thomson and both considered in the family of WebOfScience

tools. Most of the folk I know using this type of tool are using

ResearcherID, but that is the folk I know. :) The idea of ORCID is to

bring together these disparate groups and tools, and achieve some sort

of clarity and consensus. You can see this in their membership.

 

OpenID:

openid.net/

 

ContributorID:

www.crossref.org/CrossTech/2009/02/an_interview_about_aut...

network.nature.com/people/mfenner/blog/2009/02/17/intervi...

 

ORCID (Open Researcher Contributor Identification Initiative) Membership:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORCID#ORCID_group

science.thomsonreuters.com/orcid/gallery.html

 

This page includes a list of benefits of unique author identifiers for

researchers, students, & librarians. Keep in mind that Thomson will be

helping folks with ResearcherIDs to merge into the new ORCID system.

isiwebofknowledge.com/researcherid/

 

They offer free training.

science.thomsonreuters.com/training/rid/

 

Here is a good library guide example:

www.lib.ncep.noaa.gov/databases/researcherid/

 

They also provide a map mashup tool for those folks going up for

tenure to be able to visualize the scope of their interdisciplinary

and international collaborations:

 

ResearcherID Now with Mashups:

network.nature.com/people/mfenner/blog/2008/04/22/researc...

 

More experimental features here:

isiwebofknowledge.com/researcherid/ridlabs/

 

Another excellent blogpost about this topic says this: "My experience

with the DOI for papers (e.g. the limited support in PubMed) tells me

that adoption of ORCID will be a long process." Ain't it the truth.

 

Fenner M. ORCID or how to build a unique identifier for scientists in

10 easy steps

network.nature.com/people/mfenner/blog/2010/01/03/orcid-o...

Done