Claim and share your research contributor roles with Rescognito

Rescognito is a new, free and open system with a mission to expand researcher recognition. An individual researcher identity is verified by an ORCID ID and a scholarly work (article/preprint, data set, software, protocol, etc.) must have a digital object identifier (DOI). Based on verification of these two persistent identifiers, a researcher/scholar/contributor may claim up to 5 different roles they fulfilled in the scholarship from the CRediT Taxonomy of 14 potential types (conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, software, validation, etc.). A researcher may also recognize work performed by others. With the researcher’s permission, these contributor roles can be transparently shared to their ORCID profile. Publishers may collaborate with Rescognito to implement the CRediT Taxonomy and data checklists within their publication workflows. As a standards-based (CRediT, DOI, ORCID, ROR), transparent, researcher-driven tool that plugs into the open scholarship ecosystem, Rescognito promulgates the various facets of research and who performs them.

Keeping the researcher at the center of data control and quality: a review of the ORCID Trust Program

ORCID established its Trust Program in 2016, and this blog post celebrates its fifth anniversary. The ORCID organization, of which UMass Amherst is a member, has a mission “of enabling transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their contributions, and their affiliations” and “a vision of a world where all who participate in research, scholarship, and innovation are uniquely identified and connected to their contributions across disciplines, borders, and time.” These aspirations are made real on the basis of trust built on individual researcher control, accountability and strict organization provenance tracking. Researchers/scholars/contributors control who can write to, read from and edit the data associated with their ORCID profile, for how long they can do it, with verification of the source organizations.

With ORCID’s growth have come attempts to misuse the connections and tools it provides. These include automated search engine optimization and spam generators that could potentially undermine trust. ORCID has put in place brakes that halt these schemes. Another less common problem is academic fraud by which people misrepresent their works and affiliations. This is a violation of the terms of use and these records can be challenged through the dispute procedures. ORCID is not an arbiter of what data is associated with a contributor profile, but it does provide authenticated workflows with registered data providers. A researcher can determine for themselves the authenticity of the data and the provenance of the data provider before deciding whether or not to grant permission for data exchange.

ORCID is a non-profit, member-governed organization that provides an open platform for disambiguated, unique and persistent researcher/scholar/contributor name identifier and profile information. And ORCID ID is a free service to individuals. More information about ORCID is available from this guide.

Report from the 15th Berlin (B15) Open Access Conference – Adapt and Advance

The 15th Berlin Open Access Conference (B15), with the theme “Adapt and Advance”, was co-hosted by the University of California and the Max Planck Society’s Open Access 2020 Initiative from September 28th – October 1st, 2021. Stakeholders in research and scholarly communication from 46 countries reflected on progress towards transforming subscription-based journal access to open dissemination of research outputs for common benefit. The goals of transformative agreements are twofold: “(1) empower authors to grant free and universal access to their peer-reviewed research while retaining their copyright, and (2) empower institutions to integrate, rationalize and rein in their financial investments in scholarly publishing.”

The Executive Summary of the conference summarizes and outlines action steps for these key takeaways:

  • Open access to scholarly journals is essential for progress in science and society. 
  • Open access is advancing thanks to transformative agreements. 
  • Negotiations with scholarly journal publishers are a pathway to openness and equity. 
  • Open access publishing must be enabled under equitable economic conditions. 
  • Increasing transparency of funding flows and reorganizing just a tiny share of investments can have immeasurable impact.
  • Further open access developments require bold new partnerships. 
  • Scholarly publishers are embracing open access. 
  • Mature open access strategies include different synergistic approaches.

These issues are more deeply explored in the 4 plenary sessions (with recordings and transcripts provided) and posters. The international scope and collaborative spirit of this conference signal the paths forward towards more open and equitable scholarly exchange.