The Making of an ORCID Consortium: Launching the US Government ORCID Consortium

In late 2018, the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) embarked on the adventure of developing a new ORCID consortium. There were many factors and decision points to consider – what organizations could join the consortium, how the consortium should operate, staffing resources, consortium fee models, and much more. DOE OSTI wanted to develop a consortium to share best practices, API integration ideas, discuss barriers, raise ORCID awareness, and identify potential collaborations while decreasing membership costs and streamlining administrative and technical support. We wanted to offer ORCID consortium membership to help our organizations disambiguate researchers, track research outputs and awards, highlight facility use, auto-populate information collection in proposals, and facilitate connections between a researcher, their funding, facility use, and research outputs. It took a year and a half before the consortium was launched April 1st, 2020. The US Government ORCID Consortium now has 9 member organizations and counting. This session will walk through our consortium development process and ask what you might consider during the development of own consortium, whether it’s an ORCID consortium or another PID consortium