1. ORCID for
Research University Libraries
MacKenzie Smith
Associate Director for Technology, MIT Libraries
Science Commons Fellow, Creative Commons
ORCID Participants Meeting, November 2010 ©MIT

2. MIT Faculty Policy on Open Access

3. Who’s Published What?
• No REF in the USA, so
• Drivers for publication tracking are
– Promotion and tenure cases (infrequent)
– Evaluating faculty productivity (ad hoc)
• Libraries not usually involved
• Current software is evaluation-oriented
– e.g. Symplectic, Academic Analytics, Thomson InCites
ORCID Participants Meeting, November 2010 ©MIT

4. Library Workflow
• Search public/licensed article sources by
institutional affiliation
• Try to link results to individual faculty
• 80% automatic, 20% manual (i.e. ~200 people)
• Expensive, inefficient, fragile
ORCID Participants Meeting, November 2010 ©MIT

5. Enter ORCID
• Each academic is assigned an ORCID with associated profile
data known to their institution
• Publishers require ORCID for new article submissions
• Search public/licensed article sources by affiliation
• Results carry ORCID identifiers and are automatically linked
to academic’s publication record (no more ambiguity)
• Mandate successfully implemented for prospective
publications
ORCID Participants Meeting, November 2010 ©MIT

6. Faculty Bibliographies
• Retrospectively, articles need to be linked to
correct ORCID profile
• In ORCID, can be done once per paper for all
consumers rather than once per consumer
• Leverages network of stakeholders, lowers
cost to everyone
ORCID Participants Meeting, November 2010 ©MIT

7. Open Access
• Profile data that can be shared (i.e. not private)
SHOULD be shared, openly and freely
• Only need bibliographic data required for author
disambiguation
• Other research output data (e.g. grants, courses,
awards) optional at researcher’s or institution’s
discretion
ORCID Participants Meeting, November 2010 ©MIT

8. Public Access
• Should be to the ID and (sharable) profile data
• NOT necessarily to complete bibliographies or
other research outputs
• Serves as a back end data source to a variety
of richer systems at institutions, corporations
ORCID Participants Meeting, November 2010 ©MIT