Improving Attribution of Research Outputs Through Name Disambiguation with ORCID

Abstract

Because researcher names are ambiguous, systems and other researchers cannot always tell them apart and properly give them credit for their work. This is especially a challenge for researchers who have very common names or names that are abbreviated or reconstituted to conform, for example, to different citation styles and publishing platforms. Open Researcher and Contributor ID, or ORCID, is an approach to solving this problem by creating and maintaining a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. An initiative at Purdue University is endeavoring to integrate ORCID with HUBzero, a web-based platform that is used by scholars to create and share their research outputs, such as simulation tools, datasets, seminars, tutorials, conference papers, and other publications. This integration will enable users to create and associate their ORCID identifiers with their HUBzero accounts, and when they use the platform to publish their works, their ORCID identifiers will be displayed for citation and indexed by scholarly search engines and other systems. The software being developed to perform this integration will be piloted by a group of three HUBzero communities: nanoHUB. org, the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR), and the Human-Animal Bond Research Initiative (HABRICentral). After it is tested, the resulting code will be documented and contributed as open-source software. Developing and implementing ORCID with HUBzero may provide a reference to frame other potential use cases, such as integrating ORCID with campus directory services or dissertation submission systems.