Rutgers University, the state university of New Jersey, is a large institution that enrolls over 71,000 students and employs thousands of faculty and staff including international scholars from over 80 countries. Like many other institutions, Rutgers University has experienced concerns with name ambiguity of their faculty/researchers from others across the globe. With that in mind, Rutgers became an organizational member of ORCID, which provides a persistent identifier for researchers, as an answer to name ambiguity as well as, amongst other benefits, properly attributing works of their faculty/researchers.
This blog post is based on a presentation by Yingting Zhang, Research Services Librarian at Rutgers University, at the ORCID US Community Showcase Webinar #6 on April 27, 2021. Many thanks to Yingting for sharing the Rutgers case study!
Implementation of ORCID@Rutgers
In 2016, Rutgers Faculty Senate voted unanimously and the University President signed the resolution to implement ORCID widely in the university. Soon after, an Implementation Working Group was formed with representatives from various units on campus and was chaired by the Vice-President of Information Technology and University Librarian. By early 2017, the Rutgers ORCID Outreach Team sub-group within the Rutgers University Libraries’ Research and Scholarly Environment Working Group (RaSE WG) was formed with a focus on planning promotion and outreach for ORCID@Rutgers. This sub-group created and implemented communication channels and activities to promote ORCID. Some of these activities involved outreach to faculty and researchers (individual consultations), training fellow Librarians (train the trainer brown bag sessions), and others such as:
- Formation of a Communication Plan in coordination with Rutgers University Libraries communication office
- Creation of ORCID@Rutgers Website
- Presentations to researchers and other stakeholders
- Targeted training sessions on using ORCID in SciENcv for NIH and NSF Biosketches
ORCID@Rutgers had its soft launch in April 2017 and by October of that year, ORCID@Rutgers officially launched its university-wide program.
ORCID@Rutgers Website at https://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/research-tools-and-services/research-impact/orcid
Integrations, Impact, and the Future of ORCID@Rutgers
Since its inception, ORCID@Rutgers has been integrated into some of the systems in the university:
- Personal Information Application – Within Rutgers Personal Information Application, the Office of Information Technology added an ORCID tab for faculty/researchers to connect their ORCID iD or if they do not have one, create an ORCID iD. Once connected, their ORCID iD is displayed on their personal information website.
Rutgers Personal Information Application ORCID Tab
- Federated Single Sign-On (NetiD) – ORCID is integrated with Rutgers central authentication service system (Shibboleth/CAS). This linked ORCID with other campus systems which allows Rutgers ORCID users to login with their NetiD.
- Rutgers Online Directory – The interconnectivity of systems mentioned above is evident on the display of ORCID iDs on the user public-facing Rutgers Online Directory. Once ORCID is linked, ORCID iDs are displayed on the faculty/researchers’ online directory as shown below:
Rutgers Online Directory with ORCID iD Displayed
Though ORCID is integrated with Rutgers’s systems, the work is far from over. In ORCID’s public registry, there are over 9,600 users who registered using their Rutgers email, however, a little less than half of those users linked or connected their ORCID iD with Rutgers University systems. A survey conducted in 2019 at Rutgers University also found that a little less than half of the respondents connected their ORCID iD with Rutgers. Based on the comments they received, some of the reasons why individuals did not connect their ORCID iD with Rutgers include lack of awareness of ORCID and skepticism of linking their ORCID iD with the institution. Thus, there is still an ongoing need to do more outreach on ORCID@Rutgers. The team hopes that with more integrations, there will be more awareness and adoption of ORCID at Rutgers University.
If you have questions about the Rutgers University ORCID case study, please contact orcidus@lyrasis.org.