ORCID, a researcher identifier solution which enables a wide range of improvements to the scholarly communications ecosystem, will now be offered to UK higher education institutions through a national consortium arrangement operated by Jisc.
The agreement, negotiated by Jisc Collections, will enable universities to benefit from reduced ORCID membership costs and enhanced technical support. This should accelerate adoption and provide a smoother path to ORCID integration for UK universities.
It will ultimately help to transform the management, re-use, and efficiency of the UK research output by improving the integration of research systems and processes, and enhancing data quality.
More than 50 UK universities have expressed an interest in joining an ORCID consortium in 2015, with a further 22 saying they intend to join at a later stage.
Acting as a hub that connects with institutional, funder, publisher, and other researcher identifier systems, ORCID supports the reuse of data through the automation of processes and data exchange.
Feedback from a recent pilot study with eight UK universities showed that organisations that have adopted ORCID expect to see measurable efficiency improvements within two years of implementation - especially in internal data quality, streamlining of publications management, and enhanced reporting to funders – with accrued benefits increasing steadily over the following three to four years.
The importance of this endeavour to research is also demonstrated by the increasing number of funders requesting ORCID identifiers on grant applications. The Wellcome Trust will make ORCID a mandatory requirement from August 2015, while both HEFCE and Research Councils UK (RCUK) have shown high levels of support for the initiative.
In addition, the envisaged enhancements to systems and processes integrating ORCID should also play an important role in helping universities respond to funders' open access (OA) policies, for example as part of the next Research Excellence Framework (REF), supporting the move towards an open culture.
Universities see ORCID as a crucial service, easing the workload of their researchers in ensuring compliance with OA mandates, making research more visible and discoverable, and creating opportunities for international and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
