● Introduction

In January 2011, I, as a member of the Steering Committee of SPARC Japan, organized and moderated the SPARC Japan Seminar1 on “Author ID: Recent Developments.” At the outset of the seminar, I introduced recent developments in the ORCID2 and other initiatives concerning author IDs. Then, we had comprehensive presentations on management issues (by Dr. Hideaki Takeda / NII), technical issues (by Dr. Kei Kurakawa / NII), and impacts on various stakeholders (by Ms. Mikiko Tanifuji / General Manager, Scientific Information Office, NIMS) to provide topics for the discussion session that followed. ORCID, which stands for “Open Researcher & Contributor ID,” is a project aimed at assigning IDs to researchers around the world so as to enable the rigorous identification of individual researchers and the quantitative measurement and evaluation of an individual’s research output throughout his or her career. This time, as I was given an opportunity to write about the impact of ORCID focusing on the Chemical Society of Japan to which I belong, I would like to discuss anew from the viewpoint of the society. Based on our experience with the development of a submission and review system and electronic journals, I would like to discuss our stance on the integration of author IDs or researcher IDs as well as the possible impact of integrated researcher IDs on academic societies.

When I outlined recent developments on author IDs at the outset of the SPARC Japan Seminar, I introduced the basic concept and background of this issue. Although my discussion today is from the viewpoint of the society, there is no difference in the basis of ideas. So, you have to excuse me that my discussion today will, to some extent, overlap with my previous discussion.

As the presuppositions of my discussion, I need to once again point out that even though personal IDs have been easily created as needed, their use has been limited to within a closed circle, and that personal IDs can now be easily linked to other information thanks to a remarkable improvement in computer resources and the development of network environment.

Just recently, we heard news about Tokyo Denki University’s plan to introduce an integrated ID management system with the launch of a new, cloud computing-based information and communication technology (ICT) platform upon opening the new Senju campus.3 According to the plan, the university will assign IDs not only to all the faculty members, students, and alumni of the university, but also to partner staff, such as temporary agency workers and casual workers, as well as to outsiders such as library users, vendors, and other related parties—all of which to be brought under integrated management effective from the next fiscal year. Naturally, these IDs will be linked to various kinds of information within the university.

Now that it has become possible to link various sorts of information concerning individuals with other pieces of information, we can generate new, valuable information, which is represented by the correlation between individual researchers, research costs, and research output—i.e., information about who in which research organization received how much funding and delivered what research output—in terms of distribution of scholarly information, and some of such information services have been made available on a commercial basis. In order to expand such information services and generate more value through international collaboration with other database providers, it is vital to establish common specifications and operational practices applicable around the world. This is the background that has led to the launch of the ORCID initiatives.

● Researcher IDs Held by Academic Societies

Academic societies have long managed de facto researcher IDs, namely, member numbers. Indeed, it is fair to say that academic societies have been doing this virtually from the moment of their establishment, that is, since long before digitization, needless to say about the penetration of the Internet. Managing the list of members is one of the most important tasks of academic societies and membership management systems are a mission-critical system for academic societies. It may sound exaggerated, but the history of ID management dates back several hundred years if counting from the beginning of the history of academic societies as a whole, and even the Chemical Society of Japan alone has been managing information concerning chemists for about 130 years.

Meanwhile, with more and more scholarly journals digitized, new researcher IDs—namely, IDs for contributors, reviewers, and editors—have come to be assigned mainly by a submission and review system. At the Chemical Society of Japan, we initially managed the peer review process using a card-type database, whereby a unique number or identifier was assigned to each master card with a specific role and then, by using such identifiers for identification, a relational database was developed to improve the efficiency of clerical work. Developed in the second half of the 1990s, these databases remained in the closed world of a single academic society. After 2000, with the penetration of universal web-based submission and review systems, we began to manage the functions of individuals—such as contributor and editor—and their identifiers within an integrated submission and review system. Such information is maintained by an ASP service provider, an Internet infrastructure not directly related to the society. Collaboration between ASP services and membership management systems for academic societies, except for large ones, remains rare. Rather, focus has been placed on the maintenance of data on contributors and reviewers and keeping track of past submission, publications, and peer review status to improve the efficiency of editorial work.

● Problem of Author Identification for Publishers: CrossRef’s AuthorID

Digitization of scholarly journals started, not from the side of submission and review mentioned above, but from the side of publication and this enabled the quantitative measuring of articles published by a specific researcher belonging to a specific research organization. More precisely, the efficiency of work involved in quantitative measuring has significantly improved compared to the case of non-digitized paper journals and the links between individual authors, research organizations, and research output have come to draw more attention. In the course of this development, we have encountered various confusions and difficulties in finding solutions, as there remain many ambiguities regarding the management of information concerning authors and research organizations whereas the styles and formatting of scholarly writing have established in the form of citations from early on.4

Now, in a natural course of events, CrossRef, a project initiated by a group of publishers that has created a citation linking system by providing digital object identifiers (DOIs) to scholarly journals, began considering managing authors by assigning author IDs and made an open appeal in February 2007.5 At that time, I was watching the development with keen interest. As it turned out, however, no significant progress was made in the past few years and, before CrossRef took any concrete action, more comprehensive efforts were launched by ORCID. Why has CrossRef failed to take initiative in solving the ambiguity of researcher IDs? One reason I can think of is the involvement of political factors. CrossRef has been successful in identifying scholarly articles and providing cross-reference links between them, because both discussions and operations mainly concerned technical matters. However, when the scope of initiatives expands to include identifying individual researchers and linking such information with research output and research funds, decision making tends to be influenced more by political factors than technical factors, which I believe might have made it difficult for CrossRef to move forward. Furthermore, although it seems reasonable for publishers to manage data on scholarly articles for linking and pay the cost of maintenance, the question arises when it comes to the management of researcher information. Should the maintenance cost be borne solely by publishers? Particularly, regarding the maintenance cost for researcher information, Elsevier and Thomson Reuters—which, as the operators of Scopus and the Web of Science respectively, have been managing their own sets of researcher information—face the similar question: Should the cost of managing researchers be borne solely by citation database vendors? It is not hard to imagine that these factors led to this ending. In writing this article, I had some personal communication with Mr. Geoffrey Bilder of CrossRef, whereby I asked his view about these two points, which have somewhat sentimental aspects, and he generally concurred with my observations. With this, I confirmed that the most important issue is how to build and maintain trusting relationships among stakeholders.

● Routine Activities at Academic Societies may be Supplementary to ORCID

Figure 1: Academic Societies and ORCID

ORCID is an ideal, across-the-board organization created by various stakeholders including renowned publishers, universities (libraries), and database vendors. However, being an effort undertaken on a global scale, though ideal, may necessitate collaboration with small and medium-sized academic societies on a practical operational level.

Indeed, it is an advantage of academic societies to be able to constantly undertake the maintenance of researcher information by research area. First, updating researcher information can be done at no additional cost because it is a task routinely carried out by academic societies as part of services for members. Second, academic societies can manage researcher profiles over several decades, again at no additional cost in principle, except for those researchers who change the field of research and withdraw their memberships. With respect to the management of information, the first of the two merits mentioned above, universities can fulfill the role in the form of managing information concerning faculty members. Such, however, is not the case with the second merit concerning the long-term maintenance and, given the mobility of university faculty members, it is necessary to put in a framework premised on collaboration across universities. Meanwhile, major commercial publishers with strong brand power might undertake the maintenance of researcher information over a long term as a consequence of managing submission and review systems and publications. However, the motivation of commercial publishers is, in principle, directed toward improving business efficiency, i.e., selecting and managing only those authors who write good articles. Thus, the information management policy of a commercial publisher is fundamentally different from that of an academic society, which seeks to manage information for the entire research community of its field. That is to say, academic societies have their strength in steadily and consistently managing information on a group of researchers in a certain discipline over several decades. Even when the scope of information is limited to that obtained from Japanese academic societies, we can demonstrate the appeal of such information for its high quality achieved by taking advantage of our local orientation, for instance, in the processing of kanji and special characters.

All these advantages have a potential for future collaboration in the comprehensive management of researcher information and relevant peripheral information. For instance, I believe it is quite possible for academic societies from various countries to work together in the maintenance of researcher information registered with ORCID for mutual harmony and benefit.

At the moment, however, most Japanese academic societies remain confined to the roles of a membership management system and the system itself remains confined to the closed world of the society. It is inferred that only few—if any—academic societies are engaged in collaboration with those managing other information, particularly, on research output. It all depends on respective academic societies how and with what vision they can expand this initiative and achieve greater collaboration. Some major academic societies in the United States and Europe are reportedly already seeking collaboration with other systems or sectors that are capable of evaluating research output. I believe that Japanese academic societies also need to collaborate and unite by research area to adapt to this new environment surrounding researchers.

In the first place, are individual members or researchers themselves fully aware of what is happening around them, i.e., the fact that they are now being identified at a global level and the possibility that, depending on further developments, their research performance will be managed at a global level? Before an academic society formulates its future visions, individual researchers, who are members of the society, need to have a correct understanding of ORCID and things that are beginning to happen around it.

As such, the ORCID project may eventually enable the management of researchers from all around the world and, depending on how we look at it, develop into a threat to the sovereignty of individual academic societies. However, I believe that there are many ways in which academic societies—including those in Japan—can help improve the efficiency of scholarly information distribution, a new flow of information created by linking authors, research funds, and research output.

● Conclusion

The launch of the ORCID initiative has led stakeholders to ask the question of who should be responsible for the management—and maintenance in particular—of researcher profiles. The question is being posed not only to the conventional stakeholders such as publishers, database vendors, universities including libraries, and academic societies, but also to relatively new stakeholders such as research funding organizations. There is no doubt that we are now being pushed to reorganize our respective roles in the distribution of scholarly information. Academic societies will not be able to remain what they are today. How we can solve this problem concerning researcher ID along with member services on a practical, operational level is crucially important in drawing a new blueprint for academic societies. Japanese academic societies need to consider initiatives to improve member profiles by getting involved in the management of researcher IDs with an eye on collaboration with other academic societies, both in Japan and overseas, and across sectors.

Acknowledgement and Note

In writing this article, I benefited greatly from discussion, both personal and professional, with various individuals including those from academic societies, libraries, publishers, and database vendors. I would like to express my appreciation to each and every one of them. However, the views expressed in this article are solely mine.

References