ORCID Survey Results December 2010

“This [ORCID] is the most exciting initiative in research publishing of the decade.”

“About time! “

“The initiative is definitely great and impacts all research community.”

Background and objectives •  Objectives: to gather feedback on current level of

understanding and expectations of what ORCID will or should deliver

•  Method: an online survey (administered by the Wellcome Trust)

•  Fieldwork: from Thursday 7th October till Friday 29th October 2010

•  The results are representative of those who completed the survey only, not the whole survey universe

ORCID stakeholders (personalised link)

Interested parties (open link)

n=94 n=129

• Directed at those who already registered their interest in ORCID • Survey link sent via a personalised email • 49% response rate

• Open survey posted onto the ORCID.org website and also circulated to potential interested parties • 129 complete questionnaires

n=223

Who participated in the survey?

Base: All respondents (n=223) Q: Which sector do you primarily represent/work in?

Who participated in the survey?

Academic sector includes: universities, independent research institutions, hospitals, independent libraries,

scholarly societies, independent researchers

Base: All respondents (n=223), Academic (n=118), Publishers (n=43), Commercial institutions (n=23), Funding agencies (n=9) Q: Would you say that the ORCID initiative is currently well known in your community?

Awareness of the ORCID initiative in your community - Organisation type (%)

*Funding agencies - small sample size (n=9)

Willingness to pay for ORCID services

“Don't go for the pay model. Don't go for the pay model. Don't go for the pay model(…).”

“Yes, I believe one should pay for valuable information.”

Base: All respondents (n=223), Academic (n=118), Publishers (n=43), Commercial institutions (n=23), Funding agencies (n=9) Q: If the services you require were available, would you consider paying for some/all of its services e.g. via a membership fee or a fee-for service system?

Willingness to pay for ORCID services – Organisation type (%)

*Funding agencies - small sample size (n=9)

Base: All who are not likely to pay for ORCID services and answered open ended question Q9 (n=57) Q: Can you suggest alternative ways in which ORCID initiative can be funded in longer terms?

Alternative ways of funding ORCID – Main themes

Advertising

Donations

Charge for added value

Charge for large scale use

Keep it simple Funding agencies Publishers

Universities

“Charge the publishers who are the ones most likely to benefit.”

Alternative ways of funding ORCID – Verbatim examples

“Publishers should pay a tax per article to ORCID, and in return get data to populate their systems.”

“Universities would clearly pay to have access to these data. Most of the institutions that we work with pay for data licenses. We then use those data licenses to populate our databases. The data themselves are not intrinsically useful to us as a company, their worth is to the university/research institution. Hence, there is a larger market by licensing many universities rather than one company.”

“Funding agencies, groups like OCLC or Library of Congress or Google should provide funding. If you charge individual or departmental fees then you won't have everyone; if you don't have everyone then you have nothing.”

“For the longer term, I think ORCID could be funded through charging for large-scale queries to the system (e.g. the api). One could imagine providing institutional aggregate measures or even information to funding bodies at the country level using ORCID information.”

ORCID free and open access?

“Yes, still valuable. The time has come for author disambiguation!”

“Possibly, depends on how much researchers will get out of it. ”

“No! The system needs to be universal to really reach its goal. Otherwise only minority will use it(…).”

Would ORCID profile information be valuable if not free and open?

Base: All respondents who answered open ended question Q10 (n=198) Q: If ORCID profile data for researchers were not freely and openly accessible, would it still be valuable for your purposes?

Would ORCID profile information be valuable if not free and open?

n=120 circa

n=45 circa

n=119 circa

NO YES POSSIBLY

Open  system  is  be,er  /  be,er  quality  data  /  must  be  open  for        everyone  to  use n=32 Free  /  cheap  /  open  service  means  more  people  will  use  /  subscrip>on  model  will  limit  uptake n=30

Would  be  of  no  value n=29

Should  be  free  /  no  subscrip>on  /  won’t  use  if  I  have  to  pay   n=9  

Closed  /  subscrip>on  system  contradicts  the  idea  of  ORCID  /  science   n=8  

Other answers: Closed system / data is useless / inhibits search / data linking n=7, Doubt our organisation would fund it, Closed / subscription model would hamper our own projects n=3, Closed system invites legal / licensing issues / confusion n=2

Would ORCID profile information be valuable if not free and open? ‘No’ (top 5 themes)

Base: All respondents who answered open ended question Q10 (n=198) Q: If ORCID profile data for researchers were not freely and openly accessible, would it still be valuable for your purposes?

n=120 circa

Would ORCID profile information be valuable if not free and open? - Verbatim examples

“No, it would be virtually invisible”

“Having a pay/closed system would make the system virtually useless. Let's be very honest here, most of the point of a system like ORCID is to deal with authors from non-western countries with masses of people that share the same anglicized name. If those users can't access the system due to financial constraints, what's the point of implementing ORCID in the first place?”

“Well, look how far you get with the current researcher ID. To make an ORCID really useful it has to be open.”

“No, it would not be so valuable. That's why ORCID would be less known than other initiatives (ISI, SCOPUS, PUBMED, etc.) and less useful for researchers to let the people know about themselves.”

“Much less valuable as it needs to be a tool not only for paying members but for the public at large.”

Would ORCID profile information be valuable if not free and open? ‘Possibly’ (top 6 themes)

Base: All respondents who answered open ended question Q10 (n=198) Q: If ORCID profile data for researchers were not freely and openly accessible, would it still be valuable for your purposes?

n=119 circa

Only  of  value  if  it  was  the  universal  standard  /  had  cri>cal  mass   n=31  

Would  be  of  limited  value  /  less  useful  /  restric>ve   n=24  

Would  depend  on  the  charge  /  only  if  inexpensive  /  non-­‐profit  basis   n=16  

Disambigua>on  is  the  primary  issue  –  not  interested  in  profile  informa>on  /  other  features   n=13  

Free  disambigua>on  service  /  pay  for  more  advanced  features   n=9  

Publishers  /  ins>tu>ons  could  pay  subscrip>on   n=9  

Other answers: Author should have control over data =7, Doubt our institution / organisation would fund it n=4, If paying for data, no limits should be placed on its use n=3, Depends n=3

Would ORCID profile information be valuable if not free and open? - Verbatim examples

“Yes, it would still be valuable even though probably not as comprehensive (…).”

“It will only be valuable if it is as comprehensive as possible - so there needs to be a critical mass of participants”

“This would depend on the eventual uptake of the service. When there are a large enough collection of researchers in the system and third parties referencing the IDs the cost of licensing access may become justifiable”

“Profile data to me is out of scope, so as long as I can do author disambiguation and uniquely identify authors, I don't care about the profile data”

“'Maybe, depends on how much researchers will get out of it. Perhaps an institution could pay the subscription instead of individual members, or have both options”

Would ORCID profile information be valuable if not free and open? ‘Yes’

Base: All respondents who answered open ended question Q10 (n=198) Q: If ORCID profile data for researchers were not freely and openly accessible, would it still be valuable for your purposes?

Yes,  would  s>ll  be  of  value n=38

My  ins>tu>on  /  organisa>on  would  subscribe  /  I  would  ask  them  to    subscribe n=6

Closed  system  ensures  privacy n=1

n=45 circa

Would ORCID profile information be valuable if not free and open? - Verbatim examples

“Yes, I believe one should pay for valuable information.”

“Yes, makes the publishing business more efficient, helps save costs elsewhere”

“Yes, depending on scientists' recommendations for purchase based on usefulness and ease of ORCID access.”

“Yes; it's a time-saving service that streamlines the grant process.”

“Yes, I think my institution would subscribe to gain access.”

“To avoid privacy issues, it probably has to be limited to members/subscribers only.”

“For our purposes, probably would be OK given that our institution would probably be a member. However, we would like the profile information and publication claims deposited for our users to be available openly to all, at least at some level.”

Key use/rationale for ORCID

Author disambiguation / ability to identify unique authors with similar names n=69 31%

Unification of data / link data together / ease of search / indexing n=52 24%

To search for a particular author / obtain profile information / automated CVs n=39 18%

Bibliometric publication analysis / publication list n=30 14%

Integrate into other databases – e.g. PubMed, WoS, Scopus, arXiv, SSRN n=27 12%

Access to bibliographies n=17 8%

Good API / interface – reliable / good design / documentation n=16 7%

To track an author – progress / publications / funding / grants / career n=13 6%

To ensure the correct author gets credit / recognition / attribution n=13 6%

ORCIDs simplify the submission process / articles / grants n=13 6%

Base: All who answered open ended question Q6, (n=220) Q: Can you provide a description of how you would like to make use of the ORCID in your own context?

Key use/rationale for ORCID (top 10 themes)

Key use/rationale for ORCID – Verbatim examples (1) Author disambiguation / ability to identify unique authors with similar names

“As an editor of an open access journal, single IDs for authors is helpful. As an independent researcher having a single online ID (I'd like to use myopenid ) would be quite helpful.”

“I work for a journal, and one of our biggest problems is duplicate records in our manuscript tracking database. Having a unique ID number for researchers would help greatly in this area.”

“Just concentrate on the assignment and disambiguation. Like in Hollywood, get a unique ID allocated and other groups can do the rest (IMDB etc).”

“Unambiguously identifying authors when searching for peer reviewers; when I click on a name I want PubMed to actually search by ORCID rather than by name..”

“An API to help disambiguate author names or normalise spellings.”

Key use/rationale for ORCID – Verbatim examples (2) Unification of data / link data together / ease of search / indexing

“I am interested in developing tools for department and institution evaluation and ranking as well as quantifying differences between male and female researchers in terms of publications, impact and awarded grants.”

“I need a link to bind together both a library system, a national authority system, multiple institution archive systems and a national research system.”

“Would love the ability to cross-search between our in-house publications database and search indexes on authors name, to check for publications.”

“Making sure the ORCID database is comprehensive. If it only covers 75% of people, it won't work.”

“We would allow researchers to register their ORCID identifier with our software so that we could automatically import their research publications and other data from ORCID - this reduces rekeying activity as researchers might then be able to manage their data in one place and not have to duplicate effort. We would also be interested in allowing researchers to upload data from our systems within universities into the ORCID system.”

Key use/rationale for ORCID – Verbatim examples (3) Search for a particular author / obtain profile information / automated CVs

“We would simply be adding the ids to our articles and checking that names and ids are used consistently.”

“As a librarian, to be able to do a successful author search.”

“'I am using publication data matched to individual scientists in order to understand academic career outcomes. Having ORCID IDs available would make this work much easier.”

“We would like to be able to search/track our faculty's publications. The ORCID would make it possible to positively search for all publications authored by a specific faculty.”

“I am hopeful that the names associated with ORCID can be matched with library authority data to assist with collocation of materials described in library catalogs and article-level information.”

Base: All respondents who are not individual researchers (n=220) Q: Thinking about the ORCID profile information of individual researchers, who do you believe will create and/or maintain this information in the future? Don’t know answers are not shown

Maintaining ORCID profiles: Who? (%) YES (net)

73%

67%

64%

40%

35%

What ORCID services would be useful?

How useful or not useful you consider the following ORCID services to be? All (Top 7)

Base: All respondents (n=223) Q: How useful to you/your organization do you consider the following potential ORCID services to be?

Useful (net)

How useful or not useful you consider the following ORCID services to be? All (8-14)

Base: All respondents (n=223) Q: How useful to you/your organization do you consider the following potential ORCID services to be?

Useful (net)

Future developments

Base: All respondents (n=223) Q: How best we can inform you of ORCID initiative developments over the next 12 months?

How best we can inform you of ORCID initiative developments over the next 12 months?

“Blogs/online Webinars

Conferences Mailing lists”

Base: All respondents who answered open ended question Q15 (n=60) Q: Finally, if there are any further comments you would like to give, please use the box below.

Further comments – Verbatim examples (1)

“(…) minimize operational cost, allow duplication, distributed hosting, etc. Get libraries involved, who are more than likely to help out here, and get the Open Source scientific community helping out with software development. Don't leave this to the publishers; they have shown quite inadequate in many aspects of publishing; author identification and citation identification two prominent examples. There is not reason to believe that after 10 years of no innovation, they can pull this off using their models.”

“Don't get institutions (universities etc) involved. Do this through the journals/conferences and participation will follow.”

“Keep it simple. Stay true to the published mission statement. Registration must be free for authors. Clearly publish how privacy is affected and protected by this effort.”

“This has the potential to be an essential new development, but it will have to become the single community standard, or at least map 100% to other such initiatives.”

Further comments – Verbatim examples (2)

“The initiative is definitely great and impacts all research community. Therefore, you have a lot of stakeholders. But, with such a huge board and amount of people involved you risk to become unmanageable (and also it costs a lot, probably). So, try to keep the core small and put all others in "watchers" that can step up and contribute, participate in discussions, but are not necessarily involved in the decision”

“We're 100% behind this - it will be a hugely significant development for academic publishing. Good luck!”

“ORCID needs to develop its product portfolio and then work our how it should market itself and make it be known that it is not an agency of a publisher - that it is a not-for-profit initiative that is doing something that for the benefit of all those involved in supporting the research process. There might need to be some work done to be explicit about what the publishers will get out of this”

“Please go ahead with your initiative ”

Base: All respondents who answered open ended question Q15 (n=60) Q: Finally, if there are any further comments you would like to give, please use the box below.