Bridging identity challenges: why and how one library plugged ORCiD into their enterprise
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-04-2018-0046 |
| Pages | 625-639 |
| Date | 16 September 2019 |
| Published date | 16 September 2019 |
| Author | James Powell,Carol Hoover,Andrew Gordon,Michelle Mittrach |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
Bridging identity challenges: why
and how one library plugged
ORCiD into their enterprise
James Powell, Carol Hoover, Andrew Gordon and Michelle Mittrach
Department of Research Library, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos,
New Mexico, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation and impact of a locally customized
Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCiD) profile wizard. It also provides a broader context for adopting
ORCiD as an identity and single sign-on solution.
Design/methodology/approach –A custom web application was designed by a library team and
implemented using a combination of the OAuth protocol and the ORCiD web services API. The tool leveraged
a rich, curated set of local publication data, and exposed integration hooks that allowed other enterprise
systems to connect ORCiD IDs with an internal employee identifier.
Findings –Initially the tool saw only modest use. Ultimately its success depended upon integration with
other enterprise systems and the requirement of an ORCiD ID for internal funding requests, rather than
exclusively on the merits of the tool. Since introduction, it has been used to generate over 1,660 ORCiDs from a
population of 4,000 actively publishing researchers.
Practical implications –Organizations that desire to track publications by many affiliated authors would
likely benefit from some sort of integration with ORCiD web services. This is particularly true for
organizations that have many publishing researchers and/or track publications spanning many decades.
Enterprise integration is crucial to the success of such a project.
Originality/value –Research inputs and research products are now primarily digital objects. So having a
reliable system for associating researchers with their output is a big challenge that, if solved, could increase
researcher impact and enhance digital scholarship. ORCiD IDs are a potential glue for many aspects of this
problem. The design and implementation of the wizard eased and quickened adoption of ORCiD Ids by local
researchers due in part to the ease with which a researcher can push publication information already held by
the library to their profile. Subsequent integration of researcher ORCiD IDs with local enterprise systemshas
enabled real-time propagation of ORCiD IDs across research proposal workflow, publication review and
content discovery systems.
Keywords Digital libraries, Identity management, Identification, Author disambiguation
Paper type Case study
Introduction
Zipf’s law is well known within the linguistic community (Silagadze, 1997). It states that the
frequency of occurrence of the most common word in a language will be twice as much as
the next most frequently used word. This distribution pattern, also known as a power law, is
characteristic of complex systems, including language, financial systems, naming practices,
city density and personal names (Zipf, 1949; Reed, 2001; Gabaix, 1999):
The frequency distribution of personal names, graphed as the logarithm of name popularity
against the logarithm of name popularity rank, looks similar to other frequency or popularity
distributions where persons and organizations are free to create and choose among many
collections of symbols. Galbi (2002)
Personal names usually consist of, at a minimum, a surname and a given name. A surname,
or family name is a “vertical transmission of a cultural feature […] (in most cases, at least)
inherited from the father”(Zanette and Manrubia, 2001). The frequency of family names is
dependent upon family size, which is one reason family names exhibit a power law
distribution. A given name is usually chosen by parents at birth, and this selection tends
to be affected by many variables, including culture, immigration, economics and time.
Library Hi Tech
Vol. 37 No. 3, 2019
pp. 625-639
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/LHT-04-2018-0046
Received 4 April 2018
Revised 20 August 2018
13 November 2018
Accepted 6 December 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
625
Bridging
identity
challenges
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