ORCID and OA Switchboard work to “connect the dots” of PIDs in the Open Access Journey

Open scholarly infrastructure organizations collaborate to navigate the OA research and publishing maze to help solve compliance with emerging requirements

BETHESDA, MARYLAND, US, April 19, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- We are excited to announce the first of a series of planned collaborations between ORCID and the OA Switchboard with the launch of ORCID-enabled smart matching in OA Switchboard. With their April 2022 release, OA Switchboard users will be able to leverage authoritative affiliation data from authors’ ORCID profiles to corroborate affiliation or organizational identifiers (such as ROR or Ringgold IDs) and ensure more accurate routing of the messages being shared between participants throughout the Open Access (OA) research cycle and publication journey, ultimately resulting in more complete and better quality metadata in the OA Switchboard messages for each article published.

As adoption of OA Switchboard increases, we expect further specific use cases in the collaboration with ORCID to emerge, but initially the OA Switchboard is expected to:
- Reduce the burden required to check and confirm research funder and institutional OA requirements, mandates, or agreements, as well as author, article, and license compliance
- Enable publishers to offer a compliant author journey
- Improve internal and external reporting with more complete, higher quality input data
- Enable the fulfillment of OA publication-level arrangements, and
- Match publication costs with publication funds.

The OA Switchboard’s independently managed, shared infrastructure provides a neutral space for the exchange of OA publication metadata. The standardized protocol allows for the transparent exchange of data about OA publications, designed to operate and integrate with all stakeholder systems. It eases the administrative burden of maintaining many-to-many relationships, and managing open access compliance. It also reduces the sheer volume of manual information exchange.

ORCID and OA Switchboard are well aligned to help simplify the sharing of information about OA publications throughout the entire publication journey
Both OA Switchboard and ORCID are mission-driven, community-led non-profit initiatives designed by and for stakeholders in the research community. OA Switchboard enables research funders, institutions and their libraries and academic publishers, to navigate the OA research and publishing maze. ORCID strives 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. Both OA Switchboard and ORCID understand the challenges publishers, funders and institutions face when implementing new OA agreements and honoring policies and mandates, making them ideal partners to help solve these challenges.

Connecting the PID dots: a scenario of ORCID-enabled smart matching
The newly released functionality is open source and can be used by publishers when they compose and send messages through the OA Switchboard Suggestor API. When a message contains just text for the affiliation data, but includes an ORCID iD for the corresponding author, the feature looks up the affiliation data in the ORCID record and compares it to the institution name in the message. If there is a match, the institutional identifier from the ORCID record will then be used to determine the intended recipient of the message.

Yvonne Campfens, Executive Director of the OA Switchboard said, “We’re excited about this collaboration as it builds directly on key insights gained in our first operational year, namely that PIDs in article-level metadata are critical for solving real problems, and that there is tension between providing a great author experience and an ‘ideal process’. These challenges can only be tackled by industry-wide collaboration, interoperability of systems and solutions, and building on existing PIDs like ORCID iD.”

Chris Shillum, Executive Director of ORCID said, “As a key part of the open scholarly infrastructure, ORCID has long sought to further the cause of open research. By collaborating with the OA Switchboard, we are delighted to be able to advance our strategic goals of improving value to members and researchers alike by reducing the burden required to administer OA publication journeys and help ensure compliance with OA requirements, mandates and agreements.”

About ORCID--ORCID’s vision is a world where all who participate in research and innovation, from imagining to building and managing, are uniquely identified and connected to their contributions across disciplines, borders, and time. ORCID seeks to reduce administrative burden for researchers and help organizations understand the impact of the research they are facilitating or funding by providing an identifier for individuals to use with their name as they engage in research and innovation activities, as well as the tools that enable transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their contributions, and affiliations. Learn more at https://orcid.org.

About OA Switchboard--A global not-for-profit and independent intermediary established in 2020, the OA Switchboard provides a central hub for research funders, institutions and publishers to exchange OA-related publication-level information. Connecting parties and systems, and streamlining communication and the neutral exchange of metadata, the OA Switchboard provides direct, indirect and community benefits: simplicity and transparency, collaboration and interoperability, and efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Our neutrality and independence are preserved by legal structure, governance and articles of incorporation. We are building our systems and services in accordance with our core principles. We are also honouring the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) to ensure sustainability and to preserve the goals of the OA Switchboard in the future.

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Julie Anne Petro
ORCID
j.petro@orcid.org
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