CASRAI and ORCID – Putting the pieces together to collaboratively support the research community

Abstract

Researchers and the organizations that support research are stymied by data that are inconsistently specified. Incentives to share data go together with mechanisms to support interoperability. Both are starting to gain traction with the development and implementation of shared standards in research data exchange. The Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information (CASRAI) provides a peer-reviewed, open dictionary of terminology for the semantics and record-structures of research information. ORCID provides a persistent registry for researchers to obtain a unique identifier and, like CASRAI, works with the community to embed these identifiers in research workflows. Coupled with the CERIF model, which has been adopted as a structural model for research management systems by the European Commission, and CrossRef publication and DataCite dataset identifiers, these underlying exchange standards and services comprise a framework that supports open access and acknowledgement of researcher contributions. In this paper we describe a recent effort to ensure that information exchanged between systems meets the needs of both researchers and data consumers.