Visualizing institutional activity using persistent identifier metadata

Abstract

This article investigates the opportunities and current challenges involved in using persistent identifier (PID) metadata to understand institutional research activity, based on a 2022 data visualization project led by the ORCID US Community (administered by Lyrasis) in partnership with two fellows from the Drexel University LEADING program. The fellows created an R [See: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(programming_language), accessed September 12, 2023] script that can be used to retrieve information about publishing collaborations between researchers at a home organization and other organizations across the globe, based on metadata from researchers’ ORCID profiles and Crossref DOIs. The dataset produced by the script can be imported into a Tableau Public dashboard template, resulting in a data visualization that can be shared with multiple stakeholders to show trends in collaboration activity and emphasize how PIDs are useful for visualizing researcher activity and impact. However, multiple gaps in the ORCID and DOI metadata, such as authors with no ORCID iD, ORCID profiles with no institution or works data, and missing collaborator information in DOI records, indicate that we still have a long way to go before PIDs can be used to demonstrate a complete picture of research activity.