De Facto Standards Interoperating in the Real World - VIVO/ORCID/CASRAI

Abstract

A compelling and dominant use case for the research management domain is the discoverability of researchers based on their expertise. An approach to meet the requirements of a larger research information landscape needs to apply business context to constrain the whole-world into smaller semantic packages. These packages (CVs, finance reports, HR reports, outputs reports, impacts reports, etc.) need to be exchangeable with relevant systems in multiple domains such as HR, Finance and Research Information systems. To guarantee a scalable approach, these packages need to align with community-driven efforts at standardizing IDs and models for these package exchanges. VIVO and ISF already align with ORCID for the standard ID part of the problem and we plan to focus on the standard model part of the problem.

In particular, there is an increased need to communicate research information between universities and funders - in our experience HR and finance systems are typically a poor source of information about researchers and their research. Instead, the CRIS (Current Research Information System) provides the framework for consolidating, enriching, and communicating: to the public and other researchers (research portal) and funders (through funding applications). In order to communicate researcher biosketch information to a multitude of different funding systems, we need standards. Several funders now require structured CVs for grantees, such as the Canadian Common CV and the U.S. SciENcv, offering exciting opportunities to standardize and exchange data, improving reporting capabilities, and reducing redundant data entry. Being able to communicate standardized researcher information in a variety of formats and contexts would benefit from a standardized approach to allow users to correctly interpret and map individual data elements in the target system.

In this talk we discuss the general contributions of ORCID and CASRAI, identify points of collaboration, and provide examples of how organizations are using these standards within research administration solutions such as CONVERIS.