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ORCID

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ORCID is a nonproprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely identify scientific and other academic authors and contributors. This can include Wikipedia editors and contributors to other Wikimedia projects. We also store ORCID iDs in Wikidata (using Property:P496), and display them on articles in several projects.

Anyone may register for an ORCID iD, free, at https://orcid.org - this takes around 30 seconds. The current use of ORCID in Wikimedia projects is described at en:WP:ORCID (and translations).

This page is for consideration of how we might make more use of ORCID iDs for editors/ contributors, and discussion of how to resolve any issues which might occur as we do so.

Rationale

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Wikimedia contributors vary across a spectrum; from the casual to the highly-committed, from hobbyist to academics, and more. For some contributors, it is important to assert their real-life identity and credentials, and to have their work on and off Wikimedia projects identified as being by the same person.

Privacy

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While ORCID has a rigid privacy policy, putting controls very much in the hands of the individual, we recognise that not everyone will want to have an ORCID iD, nor to tie their ORCID iD to their Wikimedia account/ identity. Everything suggested here (except requirements for researchers?) must be opt-in.

Future developments

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In ascending order of estimated complexity and time-taken, we could:

  1. Encourage more contributors to register for, and/or display on their user page, their ORCID iD
  2. Display ORCID iDs for contributors to WMF blog, WMF staff pages, etc.
  3. Request (or require?) researchers applying for access to Wikimedia systems/ data to supply an ORCID iD
  4. Provide a facility for a user to include their ORCID iD in their Wikimedia profile, through their preferences page
  5. Allow users to register for an ORCID through the signup page/ their preferences page
  6. Allow users to verify their ORCID and associate it with their Wikimedia identity
  7. Allow users to sign in to ORCID with their Wikimedia logon
  8. Allow new users to auto-populate their userpage with information from ORCID
  9. Allow users to transclude summary stats from Scholia using info from their ORCID account
  10. Negotiate with ORCID to have a user's Wikimedia iD shown as an identifier on their ORCID record
  11. Negotiate with ORCID to have a user's Wikimedia contributions shown as a "work" on their ORCID record
  12. Negotiate with ORCID to have a user's Wikipedia bio (or Wikidata entry) shown on their ORCID record
  13. ...other?

Some of these would require the Wikimedia Foundation to become an ORCID "integrator" (a partner organisation using the ORCID API).

Contact

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Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing) is Wikipedian in Residence at ORCID.

FAQ

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Isn't ORCID skewed towards scholarly contributions, how can it be leveraged for contributions like Wikimedia edits/page creations?
The current focus of ORCID is scholarly contributions, for pragmatic reasons, but it absolutely not limited to that. Anyone who "contributes to" or creates content, in forms, may have an ORCID iD and include their work in their ORCID record. We might choose to provide a mechanism for someone to claim authorship of a particular version of a particular article, or a (significant) edit (or diff); or simply to claim their Special:Contributions page(s) as a single 'work' (or 'works').
Isn't the point of ORCID to assign identifiers to verifiable identities? How do they would deal with pseudonymous contributions?
ORCID does not verify identities. An individual can verify that they operate both an ORCID account and an account on an ORCID integrator site, by signing in at one site using OAuth from the other. ORCID allows an individual to claim authorship of their work, and those claims may be verified as being claimed by the person controlling both accounts, by the publisher of that work. ORCID allows people using a pseudonym to create an iD using that pseudonym.
There are several thousand new Wikimedia accounts created every day, the vast majority of which never edit. Should they all have ORCID iDs?
Probably not (although anyone may create an ORCID iD). We may choose, for example, to only suggest the creation of an ORCID iD to people with autopatrolled accounts, or to people who provide an email address. We should also provide a mechanism for people with legitimate second accounts to associate both (or indeed several) accounts with their ORCID iD, should they wish to.
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Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T136943
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Background

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