Community Materials – National ORCID Centre

A. ORCID integration workflow

  1. What is ORCID integration
  2. Before integration
  3. Development of the integration itself
  4. More information about the integration

B. Affiliation Manager

  1. Adding affiliations using CSV
  2. Getting links to grant permission
  3. More information about Affiliation Manager

C. ORCID and GDPR

D. Persistent Identifiers in the Context of Open Science

A. ORCID integration workflow

What is ORCID integration

ORCID offers two Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that allow an organization’s systems to connect to the ORCID registry, collect authenticated ORCID iDs, read data from ORCID records, and possibly add information to them.

Some API functions are freely available to anyone (Public API), others are only available to ORCID member organizations (Member API). Anyone can try any of the APIs for free on the Sandbox testing server.

!!! Any action that changes a researcher’s personal ORCID profile through integration must first be authorized by the individual researcher. The researcher must log into his/her profile and give your institution permission to make changes (e.g., to allow you to add the publication records to the ORCID profile). This ensures a proper match between users and their iDs, while also ensuring that users retain control over their records.

Before integration

First, be clear about what you want to use the API for. You can:

  • collect and display authenticated ORCID IDs in your systems,
  • add information to researchers’ ORCID profiles,
  • read data from ORCID profiles,
  • synchronize the exchange of information between your system and ORCID.

!!! Only ORCID members can add information to ORCID profiles. If you are not yet an ORCID member and would like to become one, please contact us at orcid@techlib.cz

If you don’t have the capacity to integrate the ORCID API, as members of the ORCID National Center you can use the Affiliation Manager tool to easily add employment, education, qualifications, invited positions, services and membership information to researcher profiles.

Think about how you will communicate with your researchers about the planned ORCID integration – what you need from them, what benefits they will get and what they will need to do. You may find inspiration from various ORCID materials.

Development of the integration itself

Inform us about the planned integration at orcid@techlib.cz.

Develop and test the integration using the Sandbox testing server. This is a copy of the ORCID registry that contains only test data. Your activity will not affect the real data. Sandbox allows you to test the member API for reading and writing and updating data on ORCID profiles. You create test user accounts in Sandbox for this purpose. This can be done through the user interface, similar to the ORCID production registry.

Familiarize yourself with integration best practices and make sure you meet the minimum requirements.

  • Use OAuth to authenticate ORCID iD.
  • Place a button or link on your site with an ORCID tag to enable iD authentication.
  • Display the OAuth authorization screen as directed by ORCID.
  • Use the HTTPS protocol to redirect the URI of your site and to connect to the ORCID API.
  • Receive and store all data returned in the token exchange along with the user’s data on your system.
  • Use appropriate scopes and request methods.
  • Publicly display authenticated ORCID iDs. iDs should be displayed according to ORCID guidelines.

Schedule a demonstration with the ORCID team. Before your integration runs in the ORCID production registry, the ORCID Engagement Team will double check that everything you’ve created in the Sandbox will work in the production registry.

Once approved, request API member credentials.

Start the integration and interact with the community. Communicating with users throughout the integration process is just as important as developing the technology. Researchers need to be informed about what an ORCID is, why you are requesting access to their ORCID record, and what you will do with their data. Visit the ORCID Information Resources page for ideas on how to create a communication campaign about your new integration. Or check out the websites of other Czech institutions – you can find an overview at https://identifikatory.cz/cs/sluzby/nc-orcid/.

More information about the integration

B. Affiliation Manager

Affiliation Manager is a tool available to NC ORCID participating organisations that allows them to easily add affiliation information to researcher profiles.

The Affiliation Manager is available in the ORCID Member Portal (Tools section in the top menu), so access to the Member Portal is required to use it. This access is available to the main and technical contact for ORCID at the institution, who can also allow access to others if necessary – via the Manage Users option in the Admin section of the top menu.

To use the Affiliation Manager, you need to request access via a simple form. 

Affiliation data can then be added to researchers’ profiles in two ways – manually or via CSV. Using CSV, affiliation can be added in bulk to a large number of ORCID profiles, so we will describe this option.

Adding affiliations using CSV

  1. First you need to prepare a CSV file with the required information – the easiest way is to use a sample file.
  2. Make sure that the individual fields in the CSV file are separated by commas, not semicolons, as this will lead to errors during the upload process. If you are using Excel this can sometimes be a problem, here is a guide on how to change the type of separator for each field.
  3. Also, be careful of the correct value of the ROR identifier. What Excel can do to you is that if you copy the ROR between rows, it increases the value of that number and the ROR is then invalid. In this case, although the CSV will load into the Affiliation Manager, and links will be generated to give the researchers permission to add the affiliation, an error will occur and the affiliation will not be added to the profiles.
  4. In the ORCID member portal, click Tools > Affiliation Manager (or visit https://member-portal.orcid.org/assertion).
  5. Select Import Affiliations from CSV and upload the prepared file.
  6. You will receive an email once the file has been processed. You will also receive an email if for some reason an error occurred while processing the file.
  7. In Affiliation Manager you will see a list of the affiliations you have uploaded.

Getting links to grant permission

Because researchers have full control over their profile, permission to write affiliations must be obtained from them. Requests for this permission can be submitted in two ways – ask ORCID to send the request to the researchers in their inbox on their ORCID profile, or download and submit the permission links manually. We recommend the second option as it increases the likelihood that researchers will respond to the request. You can then add your own message explaining why they should give you permission, what it will do for them, and possibly link to your own materials on ORCID and the services your institution provides in this area (e.g. the ability to automatically update publications).

You can download a CSV file with email addresses and links to permissions for those researchers whose status in Affiliation Manager is Pending or Notification requested.

  1. Click Request permission links. You will generate a CSV file containing email addresses and permission links customized for each unique user. If a user has multiple affiliations, only 1 link will be generated.
  2. Send the links to users using the bulk mailing tool to insert a link for each user into the appropriate email template.
  3. After a user clicks the authorization link, all affiliations associated with that user will be added to that user’s ORCID record and the status of those affiliations will appear as “in ORCID” in Affiliation Manager.

More information about Affiliation Manager

C. ORCID and GDPR

A webinar on ORCID iD and GDPR was held in autumn 2022. The aim of the webinar was to alleviate concerns around the handling of personal data, in particular the transfer of personal data outside the EU or profile management by authorised persons and institutions. Participants were first introduced to the basics of how ORCID iD works and ORCID’s privacy policy. These principles were then commented from the perspective of Czech and European data protection law by JUDr. MgA. Jakub Míšek, Ph.D. from the Institute of Law and Technology of Masaryk University Faculty of Law.

The recording of the webinar is available in the NTK institutional repository: https://doi.org/10.48813/qtb7-rj71

D. Persistent Identifiers in the Context of Open Science

A workshop on persistent identifiers led by representatives of ORCID and DataCite was held on 1 June 2023 as part of the EOSC Tripartite Event. The workshop focused on the use of PIDs in the research cycle. It provided a detailed introduction to ORCID, the organization providing the ORCID iD person identifier, and DataCite, the registration agency that assigns the DOI digital object identifier. Examples of PIDs implementation from abroad were also shown.

A recording of the webinar is available in the NTK institutional repository: https://doi.org/10.48813/3prk-m383