[GOAL] eLife collects ORCIDs from authors of accepted papers at proofing

[Heather Morrison]

A question for Emily, eLife or anyone else who might like to comment:

A standard ID for authors has many potential uses. The potential uses of ORCID may or may not be beneficial, and whether the use is beneficial or not could depend on the viewpoint of the observer. The potential benefits of a standard author ID have been well articulated. In the current political environment, I argue that it is timely to consider the potential harmful uses of such tracking of researcher ID.

Some examples, hypothetical but based on current events:

A government that is one of the world's major research funders is led by politicians who disapprove of climate change research. Standard author identifiers make it easier to identify exactly who is doing and citing research in this area, where they work and who they work with. This makes it easier to target the researchers and their employers.

A government that to date has been one of the world's major research funders appears to have taken a dislike to a certain religion and/or a certain part of the world and the people who come from there. Here again standard author identifiers facilitate many things, including surveillance of people who have been targeted and people who are sympathetic to them. A standard author identifier could be useful to track who is citing the targeted people, and could become an incentive to ostracize them and their work.

Some states of the country in question have suggested that universities should hire a quota of faculty based on their political affiliation. A standard author identifier could be a useful addition to people with this perspective, to expand this to demand and track citations to works by authors with an approved affiliation, and/or to develop a list of "who to fire" based on who is citing unapproved authors.

My argument in brief is that academic freedom is essential to open access, indeed more so than access per se. It is not clear that facilitating researcher identification is in the best interests of academic freedom. For this reason, I support open access but argue that participation in a service like ORCID should be optional.

best,

Heather Morrison


On 2017-03-20, at 1:32 PM, Emily Packer <e.packer at elifesciences.org<mailto:e.packer at elifesciences.org>>
 wrote:

Hi all,

I thought you might be interested in the announcement that the open-access eLife journal is now collecting ORCID iDs during its production process in addition to the peer-review stage. This means contributing authors are now required to provide their validated iDs at the proofing stage to gain access to their article proofs.

Authenticating researchers’ ORCIDs can be a daunting task for scholarly publishers, particularly for works with multiple authors. Many publishers collect authenticated iDs from co-authors during the submission process and embed them in the manuscript’s metadata.

eLife has taken its ORCID integration one step further, by giving contributing authors an opportunity to associate their authenticated ORCID iD with their work during the production process. This enables even more authors to uniquely connect themselves with their eLife papers.

Other publishers using the ExeterPremedia production platform are also able to start collecting iDs during this stage.

To find out more about the integration and how it works, please visit: https://elifesciences.org/elife-news/inside-elife-we-collect-orcids-from-authors-of-accepted-papers-at-proofing

If you have any questions at all, then please don't hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes,

Emily

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