In a modern scholarly communication system, mechanisms are required to make every kind of resource available and identifiable. The persistent identifiers are really important in a system which is characterized by a range of competitive services and requires permanence and accuracy at the same time.
Personal Identifiers
Both scholars and researchers are constantly trying to improve their academic impact and their reputation. The academic identity is important for researchers and scholars as it allows for their expertise to be discoverable to share their research with the public and to communicate with other scholars for collaborations and projects. However, in Greek higher educational institutions, a Current Research Information System (CRIS) or even something similar hasn’t been developed yet so as to create the identity of scholars and/or researchers.
Instead of using their name, which might be the same as or similar to another one, scholars and/or researchers can make use of a persistent identifier, which belongs to them no matter where they work, where they are or what they publish.
Greek researchers of the members of HEAL-Link can obtain an ORCID ID, which distinguishes them from other researchers (e.g. others with the same name) and allows them to manage their publication records and look for other researchers. It is mainly recommended to use the institutional email address while registering for the ID (e.g. @upatras.gr, @uoc.gr etc.). For those who have another form of an email address (e.g. Gmail or another institutional address), it is recommended that they add the email address of the entity/institution in which they are currently employed and to declare it as primary.
The importance and, mainly, the need to create and use an ORCID iD in the scientific research context are outlined below:
- Researchers can obtain an ORCID iD free of charge which distinguishes them from other researchers with the same name. What is more, they can have control over the way in which their name is used in literature and, at the same time, it will improve recognition and discoverability for them and their research outputs.
- They can collect multiple iDs from different services (such as Scopus ID, Researcher ID etc.) under a single identifier, ORCID iD
- They can use it throughout their career as it can be used globally.
- They can be identified by multiple relevant systems, such as manuscript submission systems in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
- They can submit funding proposals more easily, since a lot of entities abroad, such as Wellcome Trust, make it a prerequisite to have an ORCID iD in order to provide scholarships and/or grants.
For further information regarding ORCID, visit https://orcid.heal-link.gr. In order to obtain an ORCID identifier, visit the ORCID website.
Resource Identifiers
The persistent identifiers DOIs are provided by Hellenic Academic Libraries Link under the project “Research Data Infrastructure”. HEAL-Link has a contract with DataCite company in order to provide unique identifiers (DOIs) to its members, both regular and associate. DataCite is an international non-profit organization which provides persistent identifiers (Digital Object Identifiers – DOIs) for research data and scientific publications. The purpose of creating persistent identifiers is to assign DOIs to all research outputs (research data, publications etc.). The following graph shows the number of DOIs used by some Greek institutions per year.