Reporting on the UK ORCID API/Use Case and Hack Day Workshops

Posted:   Updated: Categories Events, Reports, Technical

Introduction

Jisc is providing technical and community support to ORCID UK consortium members; as part of this service, Jisc is running workshops with the community to explore the requirements and opportunities for working with data accessed through the ORCID API.

Overview of Workshops

Use Case Development and API Workshop – 30th September 2016, Birmingham

Aimed at software developers and those responsible for development projects, as well as those responsible for managing ORCID implementation with an interest in understanding and influencing how ORCID data can be used.  There were 36 participants from a wide variety of institutions.

The focus of this first day was to deepen understanding of the potential of ORCID and the capabilities of the ORCID API and to think about the opportunities it presents for use cases involving interaction with other institutional systems.

The day opened with an introduction by Nicky Ferguson, Project Manager for the Jisc ORCID UK Support team, outlining the basics of ORCID and ORCID integrations.

This was followed by an overview and analysis of the ORCID EPrints Implementation Survey by Lizz Jennings, Technical Data Officer, University of Bath, and Helen Cooper, Repository Manager & University Archivist, University of Central Lancashire.

The day was split between two strands:

Strand 1 – Introduction to the ORCID API

Led by Monica Duke, Jisc ORCID Support Co-ordinator.

This was a practical tutorial in how to use the ORCID API. The slides for the introduction to the ORCID API are available on SlideShare. The practical exercises were based on a tutorial developed by ORCID for the VALA 2016 conference.

Strand 2 – User stories and use cases

Led by Owen Stephens, Jisc ORCID Support Technical Consultant

Starting with an explanation of user stories and use cases,  the purpose of this session was to discuss and develop use cases from initial outlines known as ‘user stories’.

Over a hundred user stories (with some overlap) were captured at the workshop (including some that had been identified from previous events or contributed by email). The user stories at the workshop were summarised on post-it notes and attendees voted to prioritise them and identify the ones that should be developed into full use cases.

Following the prioritisation exercise, the attendees worked in groups to develop five of the user stories into full use cases. The five resulting use cases are:

These use cases were used to develop four challenges for the next event – the ORCID API Hack Day…

ORCID API Hack Day – 18th October 2016, London

The focus of this second day was to engage developers and practitioners to work together on addressing the four challenges inspired by the use cases developed during the earlier workshop. There were 26 attendees from across the UK HE community, the developer community, the Jisc UK ORCID Support team, and ORCID.

People who attended expressed an interest in:

  • ‘learning from those more experienced in ORCID implementation’
  • ‘learning how to use the ORCID API in the most efficient way’
  • ‘seeing what is possible with the ORCID API’
  • ‘understanding what data we can get out of ORCID’
  • ‘learning how to take benefit from the push/pull of data from our repository’
  • ‘seeing what innovation and best practice is happening in institutions’
  • ‘working on community problems and sharing ideas’

Participants worked in groups and selected from the four challenges, that were developed drawing on the use cases at the 30th September workshop:

Due to work done by the team at CORE (based at The Open University) in advance of the hack day Matteo Cancellieri was able to present materials relevant to the ORCID Networks challenge at the start of the day. This work is summarised in a blog post “Analysing ORCID coverage across repositories through CORE”.

At the end of the day, each group presented their work and the presentations were filmed:

Group 1: ORCID Everywhere

Presented by Alan Stiles, The Open University

Challenge: Make it easy for researchers to use their ORCID in one or more settings, without having to type in their ORCID ID number.

Group 2: ORCID Dashboard

Presented by Helen Cooper, UCLAN, and Matteo Cancellieri, CORE at The Open University

Challenge: Design and develop an institutional dashboard that collects information from ORCID and displays it to enable reporting on ORCID adoption, and help target ORCID advocacy within institutions.

Group 3: ORCID Onboarding

Presented by Ian Ibbotson, Knowledge Integration, and Adnan Adil, University of West London

Challenge: Support researchers through the process of signing up for an ORCID and adding key biographical, contact and publications information. In particular consider how researchers can be encouraged to record their institutional email and/or institutional affiliation (to make it easier for institutions to track which of their researchers have signed up for ORCIDs).

Examples of specific outputs from the group work included:

  • A set of recommendations on recording and displaying ORCIDs within the Eprints software. These recommendations have been added to the EPrints Wiki
  • An outline design for an ORCID Dashboard
  • Identification that the recording/asserting of institutional affiliations of users with ORCIDs is key to effective use of the ORCID platform by institutions
  • Recognition that the new Jisc Monitor service already stores a lot of information that could help with auto updating ORCIDs from institutional repositories
  • Sharing of current practice in institutions

The comments of participants were also captured on film:

Reflections from both Workshops

Achievements of both workshops highlighted by participants included:

  • Learning about the ORCID API
  • Hands-on experience with the API which led to some developers completing applications and demos in a short period of time.
  • A deeper understanding of what end users want and user workflows
  • Identifying where there is more to do, specifically where there is missing data and where systems need to be joined up
  • Reviewing actual use of ORCIDs and what HEIs are doing right now
  • Sharing of expertise and knowledge between library/repository managers and developers

Next Events

Further community events are planned, which are likely to be system specific.

In addition, there will be further webinars which could include a focus on case study material to illustrate how ORCIDs are being used in practice.