ORCiD, which stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID, is a global, not-for-profit organization sustained by fees from member organizations. They are community-built and governed by a Board of Directors representative of membership with wide stakeholder representation. ORCiD is supported by a dedicated and knowledgeable professional staff.
Established in 2012 their mission is:
To enable transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their contributions, and their affiliations by providing a unique, persistent identifier for individuals to use as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities.
What is an ORCiD ID?
It is a free, unique, persistent identifier (PID) for individuals to use as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities.
An ORCiD has 16 digits e.g. 0000-0002-1825-0097
Why get an ORCiD?
Researchers can benefit from having an up-to-date ORCiD in many ways. It reduces admin burden, allowing more time for research. It ensures your work is correctly attributed to you by attaching it via your unique identifier not just your name, which may be the same or similar to another researcher. It also tracks your work throughout your career even if you change name or institution. Many publishers and funders now ask for your ORCiD.
How does ORCiD contribute to open research?
If you choose to have your privacy settings set to everyone, it makes your work more discoverable, not just publications but also your employment history, education, funding record and peer reviews. When depositing work to our data repository, it ensures it is correctly attributed. The more accurate we can make the data, the more accessible it is.
ORCiD collaborates with other scholarly PID services, providing transparent reporting of research activities. This fosters global collaboration in research.
For more information on how to link your ORCiD to MyImpact click here. For more information on the benefits of ORCiD for researchers click here.
Stacey Wagstaff – Research Integrity Project Officer, Newcastle University
In this guest post Jan Deckers, senior lecturer in bioethics at Newcastle University, explains his vision of how a ‘Wide in Opening Access’ approach can allow all quality research to be published.
It is probably safe to assume that most authors like their work to be read.
The traditional model of publishing operates by means of the ‘reader pays principle’. In this model, readers must generally pay either to purchase a book or to subscribe to a journal. They might do neither. However, where readers do not pay themselves, others have to do so for them. Frequently, these others are libraries. However, most libraries that lend books and provide access to journals limit access, frequently requiring the reader to be a member of an institution and/or to pay a subscription to the library.
In the age of the internet, access to published work is much greater than what it used to be. Some books are available electronically, and many journals are. In spite of this rapid change, some things stay the same: publishers must still make their money. In order to provide open access to readers, many now demand that authors pay book or article processing charges. This disadvantages authors who seek to publish books and who cannot pay such charges, unless book publishers can rely on third party funds that cover publication costs for authors who cannot pay themselves. Where such funds are not available, other options are available. Authors can still find plenty of publishers who will offer contracts, free of any charge, to those who are able to produce good work. This option exists as many book publishers stand by the traditional model, at least in part because many readers still prefer the experience of reading a tangible book to that of reading a virtual one. Another option is self-publication, where authors can publish books at relatively low cost, essentially by taking on the publishing cost themselves. In sum, whilst open access book publication presents an ethical dilemma where it supports the ‘writer pays principle’, its benefits for readers and the availability of reasonable alternatives for authors who are excluded from publishing in the open access mode makes open access book publication, in my view, a relatively sound moral option.
Open access journal publication presents a different challenge. Some journals find themselves in a position where, rather than to adopt the ‘writer pays principle’, they are able to get the money from elsewhere, for example from governments and other institutions that are willing and able to pay. This is the ideal scenario and – in the current world – the exception rather than the norm. This is why open access journal publication raises a massive moral challenge: what does one do, for example, when the leading journal in one’s academic specialty decides to become an open access journal that charges authors, where neither the author nor the institution that they may belong to can pay? To address this challenge, the journal may be able to offer free publication to some authors, effectively by elevating the processing fee for authors who are able to pay so that it can cover the cost for authors who are unable to pay. Some journals do this already by offering either a discount or a fee waiver to some authors. The problem is that such discounts may not be sufficient and that the criteria for discounts and waivers frequently are too indiscriminate. For example, offering waivers indiscriminately to authors who are based in particular countries both fails to recognise that those authors might be relatively rich and that authors who live in relatively rich countries might be relatively poor.
The only way that I can see out of this is to ‘de-individualise’ the article processing charge completely. Journals would then be able to publish any article that survives the scrutiny of the peer-review process, regardless of the author’s willingness or ability to pay. Such de-individualisation would also address another concern that I have with the open access journal publishing movement: how can we prevent publishers from publishing work that falls below the academic standard? One might argue that peer review should be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, but the problem is that the publisher is incentivised strongly to turn a blind eye to peer review reports, which – in the worst case – might be biased themselves by the knowledge that the author is willing to pay.
Journals that are unable to raise enough funds to publish all articles in the open access mode may provide an option for authors who can pay to publish in the open access mode and for other authors to publish in the traditional mode. Many journals now operate in this mode, and are therefore known as hybrid journals. I do not consider this option to be ideal as it sets up a two tier system, where authors who publish in the former mode are likely to enjoy a wider readership. However, it may be preferable to the traditional mode of publication as this model is not free from problems either, providing access only to readers who can pay themselves or benefit from institutions, such as libraries, that pay for them.
The world in which authors, editors, and peer reviewers must navigate is complex. In spite of this complexity, I call upon all to resist any involvement with journals that do not provide authors with the chance to publish good quality work. Whilst I hope that open access journal publishing will become the norm for all articles, I recognise that journals may not be able to publish all articles in the open access mode due to financial constraints. As long as these constraints are there, however, I believe that journals should continue to provide the option of restricted access publication according to the ‘reader pays principle’.
This is why I only publish with and do editorial or peer-reviewing work for journals that adopt what one might call a ‘Wide in Opening Access’ (WOA) approach. It consists in peer-reviewed journals being prepared to publish all articles that survive scientific scrutiny through an appropriate peer-review process, regardless of the author’s ability or willingness to pay. It guarantees that authors who produce good journal articles and who cannot or will not pay are still able to publish. In this sense, it is ‘wide’. It is wide ‘in opening access’ as it fully supports open access publication becoming the norm. Whilst it adopts the view that articles from those who cannot or will not pay should ideally also be published in the open access mode, it recognises that this may not always be possible.
With this blog post I call upon all authors to support the WOA approach in the world of journal publishing. You can do so, for example, by stating your support for it on your website. Without such support, writers who do not have the means either to pay themselves or to mobilise others to pay for them will be left behind in the transition towards greater open access journal publication. Without support for the WOA approach, those without the means to pay to publish will be disadvantaged more than they are already in a world in which the ‘writer pays principle’ is gaining significant traction. To debate the WOA approach as well as other issues in publishing ethics, I created a ‘publishing ethics’ mailing list hosted by Jiscmail. You can (un)subscribe to this list here.
Chris Harrison, as an astronomer who is a Newcastle University Academic Track Fellow (NUAct). Here he reflects on the good and bad aspects of reproducible science in observational astronomy and describes how he is using Newcastle’s Research Repository to set a good example. We are keen to hear from colleagues across the research landscape so please do get in touch if you’d like to write a post.
I use telescopes on the ground and in space to study galaxies and the supermassive black holes that lurk at their centres. These observations result in gigabytes to terabytes of data being collected for each project. In particular, when using interferometers such the Very Large Array (VLA) or the Atacama Large Millimetre Array, (ALMA) the raw data can be 100s of gigabytes from just one night of observations. These raw data products are then processed to produce two dimensional images, one dimensional spectra or three dimensional data cubes which are used to perform the scientific analyses. Although I mostly collect my own data, every so often I have felt compelled to write a paper from which I wanted to reproduce the results from other people’s observational data and their analyses. This has been in situations where the results were quite sensational and appeared to contradict previous results or conflict with my expectations from my understanding of theoretical predictions. As I write this, I have another paper under review that directly challenges previous work. This has been after a year of struggling to reproduce the previous results! Why has this been and what can we do better?
On the one hand most astronomical observations have incredible archives where all raw data products ever taken can be accessed by anyone after the, typically 1 year long, proprietary period has expired (great archive examples are ALMA and the VLA). These always include comprehensive meta-data and is always provided in standard formats so that it can be accessed and processed by anyone with a variety of open access software. However, from painful experience, I can tell you that it is still extremely challenging to reproduce other people’s results based on astronomical observational data. This is due to the many complex steps that are taken to go from the raw data products to a scientific result. Indeed, these are so complex it is basically not possible to adequately describe all steps in a publication. The only real solution for completely reproducible science would be to publicly release processed data products and the codes that were used both to reproduce these and analyse them. Indeed, I have even requested such products and codes from authors and found that they have been destroyed forever on broken hard drives. As early-career researchers work in a competitive environment and have vulnerable careers, one cannot blame them for wanting to keep their hard work to themselves (potentially for follow-up papers) and to not expose themselves to criticism. Discussing the many disappointing reasons why early career research are so vulnerable – and how this damages scientific progress – is too much to discuss here. However, as I now in an academic track position, I feel more confident to set a good example and hopefully encourage other more senior academics to do the same.
In March 2021 I launched the “Quasar Feedback Survey”, which is a comprehensive observational survey of 42 galaxies hosting rapidly growing black holes. We will be studying these galaxies with an array of telescopes. With the launch of this survey, I uploaded 45 gigabytes of processed data products to data.ncl (Newcastle’s Research Repository), including historic data from pilot projects that lead to this wider survey. All information about data products and results can also easily be accessed via a dedicated website. I already know these galaxies, and hence data, are of interest to other astronomers and our data products are being used right now to help design new observational experiments. As the survey continues the data products will continue to be uploaded alongside the relevant publications. The next important step for me is to find a way to also share the codes, whilst protecting the career development of the early career researchers that produced the codes.
To be continued!
Image Credit: C. Harrison, A. Thomson; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF; NASA.
David Johnson, PGR in History, Classics and Archaeology, has followed up his post on rethinking what data is with his thoughts on data sharing. We are keen to hear from colleagues across the research landscape so please do get in touch if you’d like to write a post.
But if I wanted the text that much, the odds are good that someone else will, too, at some point.
Recently I wrote about how my perceptions of data underwent a significant transformation as part of my PhD work. As I was writing that piece, I was also thinking about the role data plays in academia in general, and how bad we are at making that data available. This is not to say we aren’t really great at putting results out. Universities in this country create tremendous volume of published materials every year, in every conceivable field. But there is a difference between a published result and the raw data that created that result. I am increasingly of the mind that we as academics can do a much better job preserving and presenting the data that was used in a given study or article.
It’s no secret that there is a reproducibilitycrisis in manyareas of research. A study is published which points to an exciting new development, but then some time later another person or group is unable to reproduce the results of that study, ultimately calling into question the validity of the initial work. One way to resolve this problem is to preserve the data set a study used rather than simply presenting the final results, and to make that data as widely available as possible. Granted, there can be serious issues related to privacy and legality that may come into play, as studies in medicine, psychology, sociology, and many other fields may contain personal data that should not be made available, and may legally need to be destroyed after the study is finished. But with some scrubbing, I suspect a lot of data could be preserved and presented within both ethical and legal guidelines. This would allow a later researcher to read an article, and then actively dig into the raw material that drove the creation of that article if desired. It’s possible that a reanalyses of that material might give some hints as to why a newer effort is not able to replicate results, or at least give clearer insights into the original methods and results, even if later findings offers a different result.
In additional to the legal and ethical considerations, there are other thorny issues associated with open data. There is the question of data ownership, which can involve questions about the funding body for the research work as well as a certain amount of ownership of the data from the researchers themselves. There may also be the question of somebody ‘sniping’ the research if the data is made available too soon, and getting an article out before the original researchers do. As with textual archives, there can also be specific embargoes on a data set, preventing that data from seeing the light of day for a certain amount of time.
Despite all the challenges, I still think it is worth the effort to make as much data available as possible. That is why I opted last year to put the raw data of my emotions lexicon online, because to my knowledge, no one else had compiled this kind of data before, and it just might be useful to someone. Granted, if I had just spent the several weeks tediously scanning and OCRing a text, I may be a little less willing to put that raw text out to the world immediately. But if I wanted the text that much, the odds are good that someone else will, too, at some point. Just having that text available might stimulate research along a completely new line that might otherwise have been considered impractical or impossible beforehand. Ultimately, as researchers we all want our work to matter, to make the world a better place. I suggest part of that process should be putting out not just the results we found, but the data trail we followed along the way as well.
This is our first guest post on the Opening Research blog. We are keen to hear from colleagues across the research landscape so please do get in touch if you’d like to write a post. But the honor of debut guest blogger goes to David Johnson, PGR in History, Classics and Archaeology.
The trainings on open publishing and data storage fundamentally changed my perspective on what constitutes data.
Coming to start my PhD from a background in history and the humanities, I really didn’t give the idea of data much thought. I knew I was expected to present evidence about my topic in order to defend my research and my ideas, but in my mind there was a fundamental difference between the kind of evidence I was going to work with and ‘data’. Data was something big and formal, a collection of numbers and formulae that people other than me collated and manipulated using advanced software. Evidence was the warm and fuzzy bits of people’s lives that I would be collecting in order to try and say something meaningful about them, not something to ‘crunch’, graph, or manipulate. This was a critical misconception that I am pleased to say I have come to terms with now.
What I had to do was get away from the very numerical interpretation of the term ‘data’, and start to think in broader terms about the definition of the word. When I was asked about a data plan for my initial degree proposal, I said I didn’t have one. I simply didn’t think I was going to need one. In fact, I had already developed a basic data plan without realising what it was called. My initial degree proposal included going through a large volume of domestic literature and gathering as many examples of emotional language as I could find to create a lexicon of emotions words in use during the nineteenth century. In retrospect, it’s obvious that effort was fundamentally based in data analysis, but my notion of what ‘data’ was prevented me from seeing that at the time.
What changed my mind was some training I went to as part of my PhD programme, which demonstrates how important it is to engage with that training with an open mind. The trainings on open publishing and data storage fundamentally changed my perspective on what constitutes data. Together these two training events prompted me to reconsider the way I approached the material I was collecting for my project. My efforts to compile a vocabulary of emotions words from published material during the nineteenth century was not just a list of word, but was a data set that should be preserved and made available. Likewise, the ever-growing pile of diary entries demonstrating the lived emotional experiences of people in the nineteenth century constitutes a data set. Neither of these are in numerical form, yet they both can be qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated like other forms of data.
I suspect I am not alone in carrying this misconception as far into my academic work as I have. I think what is required for many students is a rethinking of what constitutes data. Certainly in the hard sciences, and perhaps in the social sciences there is an expectation of working with traditional forms of data such as population numbers, or statistical variations from a given norm, but in the humanities we may not be as prepared to think in those terms. Yet whether analysing an author’s novels, assessing parish records, or collecting large amounts of diary writings as I am, the pile of text still constitutes a form of data, a body of material that can be subjected to a range of data analysis tools. If I had been able to make this mind shift earlier in my degree, I might have been better able to manage the evidence I collected, and also make a plan to preserve that data for the long term. That said, it’s still better late than never, and I am happy say I have made considerable progress since I rethought my notions of what data was. I have put my lexicon data set out on the Newcastle Data Repository, so feel free to take a look at https://doi.org/10.25405/data.ncl.11830383.v1.
