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There's some interesting discussion going on on @taxacom about @Zootaxa's decision to mandate @ORCID_Org identifiers for authors. The argument against is that it is an infringement of freedoms and part of the 'corporate agenda' of academia.
I don't know the motive of @Zootaxa in making this step, but I guess has something to do with wanting to improve the registry of Zootaxa papers and their representation on online collation systems. That might help the journal's impact factor, and benefit the careers of authors(?)
I consider myself an 'early adopter' when it comes to systems like @ORCID_Org, @Publons, and @ResearchGate. I like data and metrics, and, at this stage in my career, I think that making a footprint across such systems can help to establish a reputation and benefit my career.
So I was very quick to get an @ORCID_Org when I first heard about it, and I try to keep mine current.
I think that the platform fails miserably at its goal. Here's why:
I think that the platform fails miserably at its goal. Here's why:
The idea is that your ORCID should be a one-stop shop to find out about you as a researcher, according to what you want to share. Being 'researcher-driven', you should be able to determine to whom what info is visible.
That freedom of data availability comes at a cost: automation and efficiency. Because EFFORT is needed to make it useful (read on), it also means that the most common kind of ORCID profile is completely empty; a perfunctory ID created because it was demanded by a journal
If you publish a paper in a journal that automatically sends your publication to ORCID, you're probably fine; it will probably be added to your profile automatically. But if you do not, you have to add it either by searching with one of a number of totally shit tools, or manually
Some of the search tools can produce replicate entries for the same paper, which you then manually have to tick and tell the system are identical (capitalisation differences are considered separate entries). This is ridiculously inefficient, but not the worst part about ORCIDs.
No, the worst part is that every author has to add the same paper to their own profile. Unlike @ResearchGate, where one author can add a paper and it is automatically linked to the coauthors, on ORCID the entry for one paper on any two researcher's pages is fully independent
That might not sound like a big deal, but it removes the power of community curation that lowers the work-load involved for any single author considerably; it makes working with ORCID's (frankly very clunky) interface a laborious task for *everyone*
For that reason, almost all ORCIDs I have ever seen have been perfunctory, empty ones. Researchers cannot benefit from the scientific community or efforts of their colleagues. As such, @ORCID_Org fails at its purported goal of being a tool *for* researchers.
