Open for Comments: ORCID is Expanding its Work Type Vocabulary

There are 130 million works in the ORCID registry attached to 5.8 million researchers, including journal articles, book chapters, conference papers, datasets, and software artifacts. Works are added to ORCID records in two distinct ways: automatically, when added by an ORCID member organization; or manually, by the researcher adding the work themselves. However they are added, an important element of the metadata associated with works is the work type, which is critical to allow the re-use and interoperability of the work data in the ORCID registry.

ORCID is now developing an updated, community-validated policy for which work types are supported, why supported them, and a documented mechanism for new additions to be considered. ORCID is proposing to expand the work type vocabulary and map it to a subset of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) resource types list, while taking care to maintain backwards compatibility with the current vocabulary.

Please join the discussion document defining ORCID goals and objectives, background for how ORCID has managed and expanded Work Types in the registry so far, a proposal for new, merged, and legacy Work Types, as well as a current and proposed new user interface.

ORCID invites you to leave comments directly in the documents. Including your name and affiliation in your comments can be helpful in continuing a dialogue about your feedback. The document will be open for comments until 31 August 2024.