Challenges and benefits of using ORCID for early

career researchers and research organizations

Melanie Sinche

Director, FAS Office of Postdoctoral Affairs,

Harvard Universityhttp://orcid.org/0000-0001-5238-9642

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Case Study: Harvard University

• Decentralized campus

• 10 separate schools

• Tracking systems for postdocs vary across schools

Several different systems used to track postdocs

Individual departments also maintain their own tracking systems

CHALLENGE: How can we identify our postdocs in an efficient way?

• Various funding sources

• Over 1,000 postdocs are not on payroll, due to types of

funders, funder requirements

CHALLENGE: How can we use tracking systems to ensure equity,

regardless of funding source?

Case Study: Harvard University

• Postdoc outcomes difficult to track

• NSF: Early Career Doctorates Survey

• Need for exit data on the local level remains

• Graduate student outcomes also difficult to track

• Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED)

• Local exit surveys

CHALLENGE: How can we capture data on outgoing graduate students

and postdocs effectively?

Case Study: Harvard University

How can ORCID help

with outcomes tracking?

A persistent identifier benefits researchers & organizations

• The ORCID identifier stays with researchers throughout their career

• Connects them reliably with their research outputs

• Improves discoverability of their research

• Improves information sharing—offering us all better data in the future

ORCID Public Data

“All data contributed to ORCID by

researchers or claimed by them will be

available in standard formats for free

download (subject to he researchers’

own privacy settings) that is uploaded

once a year and released under a CC0

waiver.”

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