ORCID Announces Launch of new Global Participation Program
BETHESDA, MD | May 18, 2022
In a gracious extension of their original support of ORCID's vision, AIP Publishing, American Physical Society, Cambridge University Press, CCC, Elsevier, Hindawi, IOP Publishing, PLOS, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley have once again demonstrated their commitment to ORCID by forgiving all or part of their original start-up loans to ORCID. These generous contributions, totaling just under US$ 1M, will support the establishment of an exciting initiative that aims to increase participation in interconnected research infrastructure in currently under-represented regions, with the ultimate aim to improve the visibility of researchers and reduce administrative burden on both researchers and institutions around the world.
ORCID obtained initial funding—including loans and sponsorships—from a diverse group of stakeholders to help cover operational and development expenses while it launched the registry in 2012, and established itself as a self-sustaining, critical piece of research infrastructure. Having reached financial sustainability in 2019, ORCID is currently repaying these loans. However, several of these organizations have agreed to forgo repayment in order to fund the establishment of ORCID’s Global Participation Fund, which, along with the ORCID-funded Membership Equity Program, form ORCID’s Global Participation Program (GPP).
Global Participation Fund
The Global Participation Fund (GPF) is a critical step towards realizing ORCID’s strategic objective to increase global participation in ORCID by improving equity of participation, and remedying current gaps in organizational participation around the world. The GPF will initially offer two different grant programs:
1. Grants for Community Development and Outreach, which can be used to financially support local partners to build ORCID Communities of Practice in the Global South; and support local outreach, training, and tech support resources for the creation and growth of ORCID consortia that serve those regions.
2. Grants for Technical Integration, which can be used to fund software development to build and update ORCID integrations in open-source systems that will enable or facilitate participation in ORCID in currently under-represented regions and to support the creation of technical documentation, outreach, and support for resources created through the grants.
Membership Equity Program
The Global Participation Fund is designed to work in conjunction with ORCID's Membership Equity Program (MEP), which provides targeted membership fee pricing that makes it significantly more affordable for organizations in lower-income countries to become ORCID consortium members. ORCID will be joining many organizations in the scholarly community that have implemented equitable fee models, including a number of our GPF partners. The MEP is a benefit offered exclusively to ORCID Consortium members and will reduce our already discounted consortia membership fees by a further 50% for members from Lower-Middle Income Countries (LMIC), and by 80% for members from Lower Income Countries (LIC), both as classified by World Bank income classifications. The MEP will also relax ORCID’s normal five member minimum for the first year for new consortia in LLMICs, allowing them to form with a minimum of three members.
Universal uptake is seen by members as critical to realizing ORCID’s mission
Universal uptake of ORCID is inherent in ORCID’s mission to enable transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their contributions, and their affiliations wherever they are. Current member organizations emphasize the importance of ORCID's adoption universally around the world, however, although individual researchers in nearly every country have registered for ORCID iDs, organizational membership is lacking in much of the Global South.
Evidence suggests that organizational membership and community building in local contexts are key to driving awareness and participation in ORCID among researchers in those locations. In turn, increased participation among researchers helps them increase their visibility and claim credit for their work, while improving funder, publisher, and policymaker understanding of the contribution and impact of researchers in those countries and improving the ability of academic institutions to better understand their global collaborations and benchmark their performance against others.
Chris Shillum, Executive Director of ORCID said, “the funding provided by our founding lenders from the scholarly publishing community was critical in helping ORCID get off the ground ten years ago. As we enter our second decade, we are excited and grateful to have their ongoing support as we launch this important initiative to increase global participation in ORCID and improve equity and visibility for researchers and research organizations in the Global South.”
ORCID expects to open its first round of grant applications in summer 2022.
About This Organization
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.