Organization identifiers are a key part of the scholarly communications infrastructure. At the beginning of 2017 Crossref, DataCite and ORCID formed a working group to establish principles and specifications for an open, independent, non-profit identifier registry focused on the disambiguation of researcher affiliations. The group published a set of recommendations and a Request for Information (RFI) to solicit comment and interest from the broader scholarly community in developing the registry. This session will give an overview of the work and an update on current progress.

3. Organization IDs
or “The Case of
the Missing Leg”
UKSG, April 2018
Ed Pentz
Executive Director
@epentz

4. Scholarly
infrastructure

5. https://101innovations.wordpress.com/

7. • Not-for-profit global initiative
• 80+ members worldwide
> 814 data centers
> 13 million DOIs
> 10,00,000++ resolutions/month
DataCite Snapshot

10. The power of PIDs

11. So now what?

12. We still have a
problem

13. The problem:

14. The problem:
Content identifiers:
DataCite
Crossref
Contributor identifiers:
ORCID

15. The problem:
Content identifiers:
DataCite
Crossref
Contributor identifiers:
ORCID
Organisation identifiers:

16. ISNI?
Ringgold?
IP Registry?
Funder Registry IDs?
GRID?
OrgRef?
Open Corporates?
LEI?
The problem:
Content identifiers:
DataCite
Crossref
Contributor identifiers:
ORCID
Organisation identifiers:

17. The problem:
Content identifiers:
DataCite
Crossref
Contributor identifiers:
ORCID
Organisation identifiers:

18. We aren’t the only
ones who think
so…

19. “Stakeholders interviewed for
this study typically described
identifying organisations as “a
nightmare.”
—JISC/CASRAI Organisation ID study

20. There is a well documented
need for a comprehensive,
open, and accessible
organisation identifier
infrastructure.

21. There is a lot of excellent
work being done and
excellent services and
providers tackling pieces of
the problem, but gaps
remain.

22. Content identifiers:
DataCite
Crossref
Contributor identifiers:
ORCID
Organisation identifiers:
Gaps

24. Why Us?

25. • We all need Organisation
Identifiers
• We know the identifier space
• We each represent a broad
community
• We are willing to take it on

26. We cannot create a
completely new
organisation for every
identifier initiative we
create.

27. Why Now?

28. • Action is needed, and the
community seems to be ready
• We have a very good
understanding of the requirements
• The energy and commitment exist

29. What has been
done?

30. • Gathered work from CASRAI, Jisc, NISO,
ODIN, RDA & THOR.
• Assembled illustrative use cases
• Consulted with the community at CNI and
Force11 in 2016
• Consulted with other players in the
organisation identity space
• Consulted with our respective members.

31. Requirements

32. Organizational

35. ORCID Principles

36. coverage
governance
sustainability
insurance

37. “Principles for Open
Scholarly Infrastructure”
Bilder G, Lin J, Neylon C
(2015) http://doi.org/9wj

38. Technical

39. “But aren’t organisation
identifiers easier than
identifiers for people?”
(cue laughter)

40. • Merge
• Split
• Have Aliases (e.g. “Trade Name”)
• Die (e.g. bankruptcy)
• Be Reborn (e.g. emerge from bankruptcy)
• Have Sub organisations
• Have Affiliated organisations
Organisations do irritating things like….

42. Harvard University

43. Subscriptions Subscriptions
Harry Elkins Widener Memorial
Library

44. 128.103.*.*
131.142.*.*
140.247.*.*
207.86.182.*
134.174.4.* -- 134.174.7.*
134.174.14.* -- 134.174.17.*
134.174.140.* -- 134.174.174.*
134.174.178.* -- 134.174.191.*
134.174.193.*
199.94.0.* -- 199.94.47.*
212.171.47.146
Subscriptions Subscriptions

45. Membership Membership
Harvard University

46. Legal
Entity
Legal
Entity
President & Fellows of Harvard College

47. Affiliations Affiliations
Harvard University - Berkman
Center for Internet & Society

49. What is an
“organisation”?

53. Organization Identifier Project gets underway
● Organization Identifier Project: A Way Forward (Cruse, Haak, & Pentz, 2016)
○ https://doi.org/10.5438/2906
● Organization Identifier Provider Landscape (Bilder, Brown, & Demeranville, 2016)
○ https://doi.org/10.5438/4716
● Technical Considerations for an Organization Identifier Registry (Fenner,
Paglione, Demeranville, & Bilder, 2016)
○ https://doi.org/10.5438/7885

54. the structure, principles, and
technology specifications for an
open, independent, non-profit
organization identifier registry to
facilitate the disambiguation of
researcher affiliations
ORG ID Project =

55. Organization Identifier Working Group
● Remit: to develop a plan to launch and sustain an open, independent,
non-profit organization identifier registry that focuses on disambiguating
researcher affiliations. This will include a business, governance and
operations model, scope of an MVP, start up funding requirements and a
plan to raise the required funds.
● Public request for expressions of interest to be on the Working Group

56. Christopher Brown
Senior Co-design Manager,
Jisc
John Chodacki, Chair
Director, University of California
Curation Center (UC3), CDL
President, Chief Financial &
Operating Officer, Ringgold
Laura Cox
Tim Devenport
Lead Consultant to
ICEDIS, EDItEUR
Mike Frame
Chief of Scientific Data
Integration and Visualization,
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Danny Goroff
Vice President and Program
Director, Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation
Christina Hoppermann
Senior Manager
Metadata, Springer
Nature
Andres
Mori
Data Projects Lead,
Digital Science
Paul Peters
Chief Executive Officer,
Hindawi Publishing
Andrew Pitts
Managing Director
Publisher Solutions
International/IP
Registry
Kristin Ratan, Consultant
Executive Director,
Collaborative Knowledge
Foundation
Thomas Vestdam
Head of Product
Technology, Elsevier
Simeon Warner
Director, Repository
Development, Cornell
University Library
Helen Szigeti,
Consultant
ORG ID Working Group
Arthur Smith
Lead Data Analyst
American Physical Society

57. Working Group Output
• Governance Principles and Recommendations -
https://doi.org/10.23640/07243.5402002.v1
• Product Principles and Recommendations -
https://doi.org/10.23640/07243.5402047.v1
• Request for Information - to solicit comment and interest from the
broader research community in providing data, hosting, and/or
resources to start up an open registry.

58. Governance recommendations
1. Adopt a hosted non-profit model so that there is independent
governance for the Registry and no new organization in the initial
launch phase
2. That the WG identify existing organizations that would be willing to
act as a host for the Registry and contract with the Registry
governance body to provide services
3. That the WG identify existing organizations that would be willing to
commit resources for phase 1. This includes donations, grants,
loans, in kind donations (staff) and secondment of staff.

59. Governance recommendations
4. The new Registry organization should be non-profit, non-stock,
transparent, well regulated, include a broad set of stakeholders in
governance, and have protections in place for assets to go to another
non-profit with similar mission if wound up.
5. The host organization should be non-profit, non-stock, transparent,
well regulated, sustainable and have protections in place for assets to
go to another non-profit with a similar mission if wound up.
6. All software developed to run and support the Registry should be
Open Source.

60. Product recommendations
Principle 1: The openPIIR is intended for use by the research
community, for the purposes of increasing the use of organization
identifiers in the community and enabling connections between
organization records in various systems.
Principle 2. The openPIIR will derive utility through a hybrid staff- and
organization-curation service model, and will encourage cross-talk
between existing registry providers.
Principle 3: Access to organizations for managing openPIIR records
shall be via permission. openPIIR staff will be responsible for granting
record management permission.

61. Product recommendations
Principle 4. The openPIIR will focus on the organization levels that are
most pertinent for the affiliation use case (who employs, who
educates, who funds, etc).
Principle 5. The openPIIR will require data elements for each record
sufficient to uniquely identify the organization.
Principle 6. openPIIR documentation and required data will be
available for use under a recommended Open Definition conformant
license, in human and machine readable formats.

62. Product recommendations
Principle 7. The openPIIR will seek seed data from organization
identifier providers who serve the research community, whose data
meet the metadata requirements, and which data are available under a
recommended Open Definition conformant license.
Principle 8. There will be open criteria and documented processes for
inclusion/exclusion, creating, merging, and deprecating an openPIIR
record.
Principle 9. Record changes will be tracked and recorded using an open
provenance model. openPIIR records may be deprecated, but no
assigned identifier will be deleted.

63. Product recommendation
Principle 10. The openPIIR will maintain a customer support ticketing
system and an open knowledge base.

64. 22 RFI Responses
Australian National Data Service
The British Library
California Digital Library
CASRAI
Clarivate Analytics
Crossref
DataCite
Digital Science
euroCRIS
European Directory of Marine Organisations
(EDMO)
Foundation for Science and Technology -
National Scientific Computation
Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF)
Inter-university Consortium for Political and
Social Research (ICPSR)
ISNI International Agency
IP-Registry (PSI Ltd)
Library and Information Centre, Hungarian
Academy of Sciences
North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Centre
OCLC
Office of Scientific and Technical Information,
DOE
ORCID
re3data
Ringgold

65. Stakeholder Meeting: January 2018, Girona, Spain
1. High level review of the ORG ID Working Group documents
a. Governance Principles and Recommendations
b. Product Principles and Recommendations
2. Review of the RFI responses
3. Establishing a Governance structure for the Registry Initiative
4. Establish initial governing board
5. Presentations by organizations interested in serving as a host
organization.
6. Next Steps

66. Presentations
Over 20 organizations responded to the RFI, of which 6 were interested
in hosting the Registry. We heard presentations from:
• British Library
• ISNI
• California Digital Library
• Crossref
• OCLC
• PSI

67. Next Steps
•Steering group → Interim Executive Committee tasked with
developing a proposal for standing up registry:
• Define guiding principles, Partner roles and responsibilities, decision process
for the Governing Council, and Host criteria
• Working Group + RFI respondents+ Org ID meeting participants =
Interim Community Governing Council
• IEC to float the proposal with the IGC for comments then take steps
to finalize the host organization.
• ORCID, DataCite and Crossref now reviewing proposal and getting
approval from their boards/executive committees - Onyar is the
working name

68. Crossref - what do we want to achieve?
• An open, community-governed, sustainable organization
identifier registry
• Address the scholarly affiliation use case for the
research community - focus
• Balance trust in governance, sustainability and
operational efficiency
• Add affiliations to the metadata members deposit with
Crossref
• Merge Open Funder Registry into the new registry

69. Crossref’s participation
• Crossref offering to participate in governance and contribute
resources (financial, technical, people) - strong support from
the board
• Crossref offering to act as Host under direction of Governing
Board and MOU
• Reviewed ORCID founding in 2009/10 - a working board used
an MOU to get things going (technical pilot) with with
resources from many organizations - this a good model
• Crossref provided staff, technical and back office support
to the ORCID effort

70. Crossref as Host
• Crossref would operate under Governing Board and
transparent MOU
• Host doesn’t necessarily mean physically host the
registry - which is likely to be in the Cloud
• Can offer support with operations and administration
• Finance - collecting and disbursing funds,
reporting
• HR/payroll - salaries, benefits, contractors
• Office space if needed (Oxford and Boston)

71. Crossref’s Analyses
• Our data provider analysis of registries confirmed
there are existing registries that can be used and
should be assessed against the requirements of
the Governance and Product Principles and
Recommendations.

72. Crossref’s Analyses
• Our expense and staffing analysis (looking at
existing organizations and rates of change in
existing registries) shows:
• Year 1 costs of $730,000 and ongoing costs of
$644,00/year
• Staffing: 3 full time staff supplemented by
contractors and outsourced data curation

73. Crossref’s Analyses
• Initial funding/business modelling - based on our
own services and others
• Grants/donations for startup/year 1 costs
• Membership/infrastructure fee based on a % of
revenue from organizations directly
participating/supporting the collaboration
• Paid SLA API with added services (notifications,
bulk downloads)

74. Current status
● Crossref, ORCID, DataCite boards reviewing
proposed governance structure and operational
plan
● Agreement by the end of April - final approval by
ORCID board mid-May and then report back to
the community

75. Further information
Stakeholder meeting write up with link to RFI responses -
https://orcid.org/blog/2018/02/02/next-steps-organization-id-initiative
-report-stakeholder-meeting
Org ID Working Group overview and documents -
https://orcid.org/content/organization-identifier-working-group