Libraries research workshop to focus on scholarly author identifiers

The Ohio University Libraries’ Scholarly Communications Conversation will be held on March 25 at 2 p.m. on Microsoft Teams. This inaugural workshop will discuss the importance of scholarly author identifiers and how they can make research more accessible and easier to find. 

Andrew Stuart, subject librarian for life and physical sciences and assistant head of User Services, will discuss ORCID, Scopus Author ID, Clarivate Researcher ID and Google Scholar profiles, with a specific focus on ORCID iD. The workshop is aimed at graduate students, but faculty are also welcome to attend. There will be time during the workshop to begin creating or finding the scholarly research identifiers. 

“We want to give graduate students [and faculty] the ability to go in and create their ORCID iDs, so that they’re ready to publish their research when the time comes,” Stuart said. “Everyone who has an ORCID identifier has a unique iD, so other people can look up that particular researcher and easily find their research.” 

ORCID, which stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID, strives to “support the creation of a permanent, clear and unambiguous record of research and scholarly communication,” according to the nonprofit’s website. It does so in part by providing ORCID iDs that are unique and free of charge to researchers. 

Stuart explained that using these identifiers are advantageous to researchers because it can help people differentiate between authors with similar names or the same name, so that everyone gets the appropriate credit for their work. Once an ORCID iD, or a similar identifier from a site such as Google Scholar is created, any research that the researcher publishes will be attached to the identifying number. 

Araba Dawson-Andoh, subject librarian for African studies and the social sciences and co-organizer of the workshop, said this is the first in what librarians hope will be a series of scholarly communication conversations to engage the campus community. The workshop is being put on by the Libraries’ Scholarly Community of Practice (COP) committee, of which Dawson-Andoh is chair.

“This is important for graduate – and undergraduates, too – to know about because they are scholars and researchers in training,” she said. “Our purpose is to engage the community on [topics] like open access, open education resources, author rights and other subjects like that.” 

Stuart added, “We want to help them take advantage of these resources and build their scholarly reputations.” 

To attend the Scholarly Communications Conversation on March 25 at 2 p.m. register here. 

For more information, contact Araba Dawson-Andoh at dawson-a@ohio.edu.