This document summarizes a presentation on institutional identifiers. It discusses how identifiers can disambiguate institutions, consolidate hierarchical data, and integrate data across different internal systems. Common challenges with institutional data include multiple accounts and data silos. The presentation examines various identifier schemes like ISNI, Ringgold, and ORCID that can uniquely identify institutions. It emphasizes benefits like improving data quality, enabling better understanding of customers and research output, and facilitating information flow in the scholarly communications supply chain.

1. ALPSP Setting the Standard Seminar 2015
11th November 2015
Phil Nicolson

2. Introduction
 Institutional Identifiers
 Challenges we face
 Benefits of using Institutional Identifiers
 Institutional Identifiers – which ones
 CASRAI report

3. Setting the scene…

4. Setting the scene…

5. Setting the scene…

6. Setting the scene…

7. Unique Identifiers
What are they? How can they help?
 Numeric or alpha-numeric designations which are associated with
a single entity
 Entities can be an institution, person, or piece of content
 Enable the disambiguation of each entity
 Proper understanding of the customer, author, reader or
institution
 Proper identification of content object, article, product, or
package
 Can be used internally or in conjunction with external partners

8. What are Institutional Identifiers for?
Disambiguating:
 UCL:
 University College London (UK)
 Université Catholique de Louvain
(Belgium)
 Universidad Cristiana
Latinoamericana (Ecuador)
 University College Lillebælt
(Denmark)
 Centro Universitario Celso Lisboa
(Brazil)
 Union County Library (USA)
 NPL:
 National Physical Laboratory (UK)
 National Physical Laboratory
(India)
 York University
 University of York (UK)
 York University (Canada)
 Northeastern University:
 Northeastern University (Boston,
USA)
 Northeastern University
(Shenyang, China)

9. What are Institutional Identifiers for?
Consolidating: Hierarchy View:
 University of Oxford
 Univ. Oxford
 Oxford University
 Library, Oxford Univ.
 Radcliffe Science Library
 Bodleian Library
 Bodleian, Oxford
 Oxford, University of
 University of Northampton
 Northampton Business School
 School of Education
 School of Health
 School of Science and Technology
 Division of Computing
 Division of Engineering
 Environmental & Geographical Sciences
 Institute for Creative Leather
Technologies
 School of Social Sciences
 School of The Arts

10. University College London: actual data
Institution City State Country
UNIV COLLEGE LONDON LONDON WC1E 6BT GB
UNIV. COLLEGE LONDON, LONDON, GB
University College London LONDON Greater London GB
University College London SOUTHSEA Hants GB
EBSCO Birmingham AL US
UCL London GB
Univ London Univ Coll London GB
UCL Hosp London GB
Univ Coll Branch London GB
University College London GB
Univeristy College London London GB

11. John F Kennedy

12. Use cases – the why
Identifiers enforce uniqueness
 Disambiguate institutional records
 Eradicate duplication of data
 Ensure correct delivery, entitlements and access rights
 Better understand your customer base and relationships with
institutions
 Improve “trust” in data
 Map institutions into their hierarchy

13. Common data problems
 Most publishers have problems with data:
 Multiple accounts for each customer
 Multiple internal IT systems for different purposes
 Data entry without standard names or ID numbers
 Lack of hierarchy information
 No formal manner to track customers across systems

14. The challenge: Data Sources
 Multiple data sources – ‘system’ data silos
 Multiple locations – ‘geographic’ data silos
 Data entered by different people for different purposes
 Data from third parties in the supply chain
 Data from bought-in sources

15. The challenge: Data Sources
Typical publisher systems: Data can be entered by:
 Financial system
 CRM/Sales database
 Authentication system
 Fulfilment
 Usage statistics
 Submissions system
 Author database
 Document Storage (contracts and
licences)
 …..
 Organisation staff
 Authors
 Society members
 Agents in the supply chain
 3rd party organisations
 …..

16. Data integration
 Using Institutional Identifiers
to link internal systems:
 Prevent duplicate account
creation
 Break down silos
 Keep data up-to-date and
systems synchronised
 Enable staff to use data more
effectively
 Simplify data transmission
 Improve overall data quality
Institutional
Identifiers
CRM
Electronic
document
storage
Usage
statistics
Author
Database
Fulfilment
system
Membership
system
Authentication
Financial
System

17. Linking author and institution IDs
 When authors and their affiliations are linked correctly,
publishers gain:
 Market intelligence about authors and institutions
 Author and subscriber information mapped together
 Knowledge of where research funding is concentrated
 Reduction in time taken calculating open access charges (APCs)
 Institutions gain information about their overall research
output
 Funders gain information about where authors reside and
publish

18. External linking – in the supply chain
 Using Identifiers will:
 Ensure accuracy of information
 Speed up data transactions
 Reduce queries
 Reduce costs
 Open data up to new uses
 Ensures that authors receive credit for the work they produce
 Ensures that end users receive uninterrupted access to the
content they need

19. The supply chain (simple version)
Consortium
Author
Submission
and Peer
Review
System
Publisher
Online Host
or
Technology
Partner
Subscription
Agent or
Sales Agent
Fulfilment
House or
System
Library
Discovery
Service
End User
Data
Providers and
Systems
(multiple)
Consortium
Societies
Funders

20. Supply-chain spaghetti
Consortium
Author
Submission
and Peer
Review
System
Publisher
Online Host
or
Technology
Partner
Subscription
Agent or
Sales Agent
Fulfilment
House or
System
Library
Discovery
Service
End User
Data
Providers and
Systems
(multiple)
Consortium
Societies
Funders

21. …becomes organised, with accurate
data and information flow
Consortium
Institutional
Identifiers
Author
Funder
Peer
Review
System
Publisher
Tech
Partner
Subs
Agent
Sales
Agent
Fulfilment
Library
Consortium
Data
Providers
Discovery
Service
End User

22. A truly linked supply chain
Identifiers

23. Institutional Identifiers – which ones?
 JISC and CASRAI (Consortia Advancing Standards in Research
Administration Information) report on Organisation IDs:
http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/5381/1/CC549D001-
1.0_org_ID_landscape_study.pdf
 Examined the landscape of organisational identifiers in the UK
and identified 23 different IDs
 Based on interviews with key individuals
 Lots of detail on use cases for publishing, funders, and
institutions

24. CASRAI report
 Disambiguation and deduplication of organisational information
from multiple sources typically described as “a nightmare”
 Benefits from effective unique identifiers are truly realised when
data is shared
 Key aspects of identifiers that support the widest range of uses:
 Governance
 Trust
 Transparency
 Temporal
 Appropriate metadata

25. Governance
 An identifier and agreed metadata must be governed and
maintained. Regardless of how this is done, it must be done
effectively

26. Trust
 Parties that rely on an identifier must trust that identifier.
There are several key areas of trust: firstly, the assertion that
the identifier refers to an organisation of interest (which may
be supported by making the identifier human-readable),
secondly, the assertion that data associated with an identifier
is correct and thirdly that the identifier will continue to be
maintained to reflect changes in organisational structure and
status, etc.

27. Transparency
 It must be clear how identifiers are issued, and to which
organisations. Processes for the management and
governance of identifiers must be defined and must be
conducted transparently.

28. Temporal
 Many use cases require information not just about the
current list of organisations, but also about their histories.
Institutions are created, merge, split, acquire each other,
change status and are renamed.

29. Appropriate Metadata
 A Names Authority can issue organisational identifiers
associated with a short list of metadata (eg name,
deprecated-name, deprecated-nameID, City, County,
PostalCode, URI), or an extended metadata list (eg including
classifiers and organisational hierarchies).

30. Identifiers identified
Identifier
Coverage
Mainly
usedfor
linking
Regulated
Curated
Historic
HEIs
Companies
Funders
Publishers
Name Global ● ● ● ●
Dun & Bradstreet Global ● ● ● ● ● ●
FundRef Global ● ●
ISNI Global ● ● ● ● ● ●
ORCID Global
Ringgold's Identify Global ● ● ● ● ● ●
MACE & UK Federation Global ● ● ● ● ●
VIAF Global ● ●
Research Analytics Global ● ● ● ●
Companies House UK ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Gateway to Research UK ● ● ● ● ●
Government bodies UK ● ●
HESA UK ● ● ●
IDBR UK ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Janet UK ● ● ●
Je-S/CDR OrgID UK ● ●
Research Fish UK ● ● ● ●
RCUK UK ● ●
ROS UK ● ● ●
UCAS UK ● ●
UKPRN UK ● ● ● ●
HEFCE England ● ● ●
PIC EU ● ● ● ● ●
Please note that ORCID had not
released the institutional
affiliation at the point at which
this report was published.

31. Global Identifiers

32. University College London: Identifiers
Provider Identifier
Fundref 501100000765
GRID grid.83440.3b
ISNI 0000 0001 2190 1201
OrgRef 52029
Ringgold’s Identify 4919
UCAS U80
VIAF 155428631
Wikipedia ID 52029
Wikidata ID Q193196
…..

33. ISNI
 ISO Standard 27729
 ISNI is designed to be a
“bridge identifier”
 Covers any type of entity
ISNI Number ISNI Number
Party ID 2Party ID 1
Proprietary
Information and/or
Metadata
Proprietary
Information and/or
Metadata

34. ISNI spans all industries, market segments, and regions
Academia
Medical
Corporate
Government
Not-for-profit
Public libraries
Schools
Publishers
Funding bodies
Intermediaries
Distributors
http://isni.org/

35. Phil Nicolson
Data Manager
Ringgold Ltd