ORCID, the not-for-profit organization that provides identifiers for individuals engaged in research, scholarship and innovation activities, has announced the formation of a new Publications and User Facilities Task Force. User facilities are specialized infrastructure available for use by researchers in their pursuit of scientific and technical knowledge. Sponsor agencies and host institutions of user facilities are interested in assessing the scientific impact from these public investments, yet currently face challenges in reporting on the research publications and other output that result from the use of such infrastructure and equipment. Key goals of the new task force are determining which data would help agencies and facilities map impact and how ORCID could enable the collection of such data in a manner that reduces the reporting burden for stakeholders.

The task force comprises both ORCID members and non-members with expertise and experience relevant to the task of streamlining the process of connecting people, organizations and publications through the sharing of resource allocation information. The group includes representatives from ORCID, US funding agencies (DOE and NSF), national laboratories (Oakridge National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), scientific societies and scholarly publishers, as well as members of the CHORUS team – Executive Director Howard Ratner and members of the Technical Working Group: Mark Doyle (APS and TWG co-chair), Dan O’Brien (ACS) – as well as TWG advisor Mark Martin (US Department of Energy).

The task force is planing to send out the workflow and requirements for comment and feedback later in 2017. More information about this and other ORCID task forces, as well as the broader ORCID community, can be found here: https://orcid.org/about/community.