ORCID and the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), with support from a working group of 16 Canadian stakeholders who are all deeply committed to supporting research, scholarship, and innovation in Canada, are collaborating to build ORCID-CA, the ORCID consortium in Canada. Together, the working group created a Joint Statement of Principles which describes the benefits of ORCID and an ORCID consortium in Canada, and confirms their commitment to encourage and support the use of ORCID across the research ecosystem.
ORCID (named for the 'Open Researcher and Contributor ID' that it developed) was established to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers, and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. The organisation aims to solve the problems of name ambiguity and researcher identification by giving individuals a unique numeric identifier (an ORCID iD) that persists over time. Unlike other identifiers, an ORCID iD is not limited by discipline or by geographic region and can be used in any open or proprietary commercial or non-commercial system or platform.
ORCID-CA will provide Canadian institutions and organisations the opportunity to obtain membership to ORCID at a cost lower than that available to individual institutions. Consortium members have access to the Premium Member API, which facilitates integrating ORCID identifiers in key systems and workflows, such as research information systems, manuscript submission systems, grant application processes, and membership databases. ORCID-CA is in the process of hiring a Member Support Specialist who will provide front-line support and serve as the primary contact with members in both official languages. This role will manage and support new members, provide administrative support, and be the central technical support contact to all ORCID-CA members.
CRKN has signed a consortium agreement with ORCID, and work is underway to offer memberships in the ORCID-CA consortium as of May 1, 2017. The ORCID-CA.org web site, launched in March 2017, has been collecting expressions of interest from Canadian institutions and research organisations. To date, over 22 organisations have indicated their interest in joining the ORCID-CA consortium.
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