Recommendation M1.2

Recommendation to anyone contributing to data products to register a personal ORCID as a reference to themselves in technical infrastructures

Description

[Status: Under development, Date: , Version: 001]

Motivation for this Recommendation:

The Helmholtz Association is determined to make their data available according to the FAIR principles, thus making it findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. In order to achieve interoperability of datasets among various data infrastructures (DIS) within the Helmholtz Association, a common and agreed procedure to refer to people within and across the DIS is needed.

In order to be able to uniquely and sustainably identify both researchers and employees in data infrastructures and repositories in the Helmholtz Association, the respective person should always be referenced with a persistent identifier (PID) (see recommendation M0).

For the Helmholtz Association we recommend to use ORCID to refer to people and contributors to resources in data infrastructures and repositories of the Helmholtz Association wherever possible (see recommendation M1.0).

To be able to implement this measure, several activities need to be conducted by different stakeholder groups. This recommendation M1.2. calls for activity of anyone contributing to data products.

Recommendation

It is recommended, that anyone contributing to data products should

register with ORCID if they haven’t done so already,

keep their ORCID related metadata current and

share the relevant parts of this data with their center for use in the centers data systems in order to keep the information in the systems current.

Binding Convention:

mandatory	conditional	optional
Helmholtz FAIR Principle	if ORCID Registry is available, then highly recommended

Precondition for Implementation:

Precondition 1: The ORCID Registry is available for all researchers, maintained and further developed.

Related Recommendations

Parent: 1.0

Dependent: none

Other: 1.1, 1.3

Contributors

Emanuel Söding, Andrea Pörsch

Content

1. Explanation of the Background and Benefits of the Recommendation

Motivation

The Helmholtz Association is determined to make their data available according to the FAIR principles, thus making it findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. In order to achieve interoperability of datasets among various data infrastructures (DIS) within the Helmholtz Association, a common and agreed procedure to refer to people within and across the DIS is needed.

In order to be able to uniquely and sustainably identify both researchers and employees in data infrastructures and repositories in the Helmholtz Association, the respective person should always be referenced with a persistent identifier (PID) (see recommendation M0).

For the Helmholtz Association we recommend to use ORCID to refer to people and contributors to resources in data infrastructures and repositories of the Helmholtz Association wherever possible (see recommendation M1.0). To be able to implement this measure, several activities need to be conducted by different stakeholder groups. This recommendation M1.2. calls for activity of anyone contributing to data products.

2. Possible alternative solutions

Besides ORCID other PID systems for authors of scientific publications exist. The most relevant are Scopus Author ID, Researcher ID / PublonsID, ISNI and Wikidata ID. We will not discuss the pro’s and con’s of each PID system here in detail. We found, however, that ORCID offers the best solution in terms of stability, reliability, cost efficiency and widespread application of the PID systems mentioned above. In order to harmonize our metadata we therefore recommend it as a common solution to refer to authors / contributers in Helmholtz data infrastructures.

3. Consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of implementing the recommendation

The use of ORCID allows to automate the aquisition of metadata with publications and data sets. Authors may therefore save significant time and work by avoiding to submit metadata about themselves and their employers. i.e. when submitting an ORICD as an author or contributor reference the respective public metadata can be retrieved from ORCID and doesn't have to be provided separately. Proper attribution of publications and datasets could improve the employees internal publication record.

It is recommended, to acknowledge data publications in a similar manner as scientific publications in journals, which means, that they count towards all employees annual achievements and count against performance based funding schemes.

ORCIDs allow data systems to trace peoples activities and create a professional profile of individuals. Although these profiles do not necessarily need to be linked to names or other private information, this could be of concern to some people. Data privacy managers should therefore be informed about the way ORICD is encouraged by the center management. Data privacy officers should approve the procedures implemented to manage ORCID in the centers.

4. The Recommendation

It is recommended, that Helmholtz employees should

1. register with ORCID if they haven’t done so already and keep their ORCID related metadata current and

2. share the relevant parts of this data with the center for use in the centers data systems in order to keep the information in the systems current.

Note 1: regarding activity 2, we recommend that employees publish their ORCID as part of their public data, a) in their email footer, b) on their personal institutional homepage.

5. Naming of communities that have already implemented the recommendation

6. Documentation of the test to validate correct implementation

7. Examples of Instances

8. Further Information

References

Relevant Community Recommendations

9. History of this document