As of August 1, 2024, Lyrasis is an institutional member of ORCID, via the ORCID US Community consortium, with plans to officially recognize contributions from individual community members by writing professional activities to ORCID records using the ORCID Affiliation Manager. ORCID is a nonprofit organization that operates globally to help researchers and contributors get credit for their work and to help organizations streamline their workflows and confirm relationships with individual contributors across the research and scholarly community ecosystem.
Lyrasis is a community-supported nonprofit membership organization whose mission is to support enduring access to the world’s shared academic, scientific and cultural heritage through leadership in open technologies, content services, digital solutions and collaboration with archives, libraries, museums and knowledge communities worldwide. Across the many programs and services supported by Lyrasis, the contributions of individual community members play a key role in sustaining and promoting the best practices of the various knowledge communities that Lyrasis serves.
Lyrasis is the administrative home for the ORCID US Community consortium, a dedicated community of practice for non-profit ORCID member organizations in the US, formed in 2018 in partnership with the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) and the NorthEast Research Libraries (NERL). In helping universities, research institutes, funders and other research-focused groups to understand and utilize ORCID to streamline research information workflows and ensure recognition for researchers and contributors, the ORCID US Community staff at Lyrasis realized that Lyrasis could also leverage ORCID to officially document relationships with individual contributors. For example, the ORCID US Community program relies on volunteers from ORCID US member organizations to share their ORCID case studies with others, and a “most helpful individual” prize is awarded each year to incentivize participation and sharing within the ORCID US community of practice. As an ORCID member organization using the ORCID Affiliation Manager, Lyrasis can add these professional activities to individuals’ ORCID records to ensure that their activities and achievements are recognized throughout their careers. Individual contributions to other programs supported by Lyrasis, such as volunteer efforts for community-driven open source software like DSpace (for repositories), ArchivesSpace (for archives), and CollectionSpace (for museums), can also be recognized via ORCID in due course.
Sheila Rabun, Senior Strategist for Research Infrastructure Programs at Lyrasis says, “Our ORCID US Community program is successful because we have volunteers in the community that are willing to share their time and insight to help others. We are very excited to take this next step in not only recognizing these volunteers for their service, but also taking an active role in practicing what we preach by contributing information to the ORCID registry that otherwise might not be included.”
Celeste Feather, Senior Director for Content and Scholarly Communication Initiatives at Lyrasis adds, “ORCID membership creates more opportunities for Lyrasis to strengthen the communities we support. We are eager to develop more ways to recognize outstanding contributions and continue our leadership role in the development, growth and sustainability of research infrastructure programs.”
ORCID and other persistent identifiers (PIDs) are part of the open research infrastructure that helps to make research and scholarly resources more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable), creates efficiencies in data sharing workflows, and reduces administrative burden in tracking research contributions and impact. Multiple stakeholders such as publishers, funders, research institutions and individual researchers all have a role to play in ensuring that PIDs are used, linked together and remain persistent over time. In becoming an ORCID member, Lyrasis is expanding its use of PIDs in support of FAIR resources in the wider research and scholarly communication ecosystem. Since 2021, DataCite DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) are assigned to works in the Lyrasis Research repository, and Crossref Grant DOIs are assigned to Lyrasis Catalyst Fund awards each year. Now, individuals that are affiliated with Lyrasis can also receive recognition for their contributions and activities via ORCID.
For more information, please contact orcidus@lyrasis.org.