Review required use cases
Having considered and prioritised the benefits we want to achieve in adopting ORCID, the next step is to understand the workflows and systems requirements to make that happen – we call these ‘Use Cases’. Each of the Use Cases listed here are dependent on integrations and data flows that are accessible to members of the UK scheme.
The use cases that can enable our list of benefits are split into three groups (Registration, Identity Management and Publications) as follows:
Registration use cases
- Register: Enable researchers to register for ORCIDs through the university, giving permission for the university to connect to their ORCID data
- Link: Link an existing ORCID to the university with appropriate permissions when researchers join from other universities or were registered before the university joined the UK scheme
- Track: Track and report on how many of the university’s researchers are registered with ORCID
Identity Management use cases
- Propagate: Enable ORCIDs to be referenced in relevant university systems (such as Awards, CRIS, Repository, HR)
- Validate: Validate ORCIDs wherever they are entered
- Embed: Embed ORCIDs for referencing researchers in the authoritative source for people data, such as the Directory Service or the HR system
Publications use cases
- Push: Enable university systems (typically the Repository) to push registered researcher publication details to ORCID
- Pull: Enable university systems (typically the Repository but might also be relevant to Monitor Local) to pull registered researcher publication details from ORCID
- Crosscheck: Get an ORCID report on publications linked to the registered researchers to crosscheck with data in the university’s canonical records (e.g. in the repository or the CRIS)
The following checklist allows us to cross-reference what we want to achieve by using ORCIDs (User Stories) with the things to do to make it happen (Use Cases).
The scoring of each use case relative to the desired user story is based on experience to date:
- 3 = Essential
- 2 = Very useful
- 1 = May be useful
| What we want to achieve (User Stories) | 1 – Fulfil external requirements | 2 – Achieve consistency across systems | 3 – Increase exposure of research | 4 – Support career development | 5 – Encourage early career uptake | Score across all Use Cases | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| How to do it (Use Cases) | |||||||
| UC1 – Register new | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 14 | |
| UC2 – Link existing | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 13 | |
| UC3 – Track registration | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 12 | |
| UC4 – Propagate ORCIDs | 3 | 3 | 2 | 8 | |||
| UC5 – Validate ORCIDs | 2 | 3 | 5 | ||||
| UC6 – Embed ORCIDs | 2 | 3 | 5 | ||||
| UC7 – Push publications | 2 | 3 | 2 | 8 | |||
| UC8 – Pull publications | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 10 | |
| UC9 – Crosscheck publications | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 | |||
The table indicates that enabling people to register for the first time and to link existing registrations in an integrated manner is the most useful service to put in place, contributing strongly to each of the user stories.
Institutions may find it valuable to complete this table for the user story columns they regard as important.