PURE and ORCID - a happy
marriage?
- a researcher’s perspective
Thomas Ryberg
Professor mso, MA, PhD
Department of Communication
E-learning Lab – center for user driven,
innovation, learning and design
ryberg@hum.aau.dk
Agenda
• I am very happy with the marriage – it
makes my life easier – as a researcher
I like that!
• In this talk – a more critical / polemic
perspective on the PURE/ORCID
rationality 
Disclaimer
• Not necessarily a representative researcher
 From the humanities – but born into the publish-or-perish
tradition (regime)
 Interested in technology
 Research into creative use of social media
 Want ownership over systems
 Do my own PURE/ORCID registrations and like
PURE/ORCID (actually…)
 My role today: Provoke, inspire, have a dialogue – any
critique is well meant
 Maybe I’m just a weirdo
A CRITIQUE OF PURE
REASONING
•
PURE as public knowledge
base
”Research database is publically available
and delivers knowledge and gains to local
enterprises and research activities”
• ”The database disseminates AAUs research
to society and the individual citizen”
• How PURE was described once in AAU (and it
was a genuine wish from our library)
ORCID as research service
•
•
•
ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create
and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a
transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to
these identifiers.
ORCID will work to support the creation of a permanent, clear
and unambiguous record of research and scholarly
communication by enabling reliable attribution of authors and
contributors
ORCID will transcend discipline, geographic, national and
institutional, boundaries
Key terms and rationality
• Rendering visible the activities of researchers is a
step towards more open knowledge
• Openness and transparency are inherently good
principles
• Researchers are interested in showing their work
to the world and share their data (which is true)
• How could opening up be problematic?
CRIS as control and surveillance of
the employees
• Extreme control and overview of individual
researcher’s production and participation in projects
• Instrumentalisation and quanitification
• Counting machine – now used for hiring/firing and
distribution of money internally
• 6 points to become associate professor – fixed
amount for a level 2 paper (local rules) – bonus for
particularly productive researchers
Fear and insecurity
Thomas lacks 2.5 points to attain this
year’s minimum quota
Efficiency to be increased by 145% to
attain a professor mso
78% of the employees produce more
than Thomas
Thomas’ income (based on BFI) for AAU
is lousy 15.000 DKK
Thomas’ Publish-to-Perish-ratio is 0.25
(below 0.10 is perish)
AAU: Redundancies (firing)
• ForskerForum 10. October:
 ”Reason for firing people is that the dept doesn’t
generate enough money, so there’s a deficit
compared to number of staff. Managements
criteria have been an assessment of the
individual employee’s competence profilce and
performance: Do you score publication points
and grants? ” DJØF-union rep. Jesper Lindgaard
Christensen. (my translation)
• So….
• Clip from PURE at
AAU
This should
be ‘grants’ by
the way….
11
General sentiment (not saying this is how
things are…but how many feel they are)
• "Paradoxically, the more that politics insists on the
importance of the university, the more it actually drives the
institution away from material realities and from democratic
civil engagement... Management and control of knowledge
has become more important than research, teaching or even
thinking and living the good life together“ Thomas Docherty:
"Universities at War“
• Increased “professionalisation” of management (hugely
increased salaries, less contact with research and researchers,
more managers)
• Increased political control, micro-management, research
assessments, growth in numbers of employees in the
administrative layer etc.
12
That is not the systems’ fault?
•
•
•
PURE is not neutral but the material basis for research assessment measures as
Danish BFI and the like
Overview of the individual’s or departments ‘production’ – affects distribution of
funding and therefore also research practice
More work has been put into PURE as a counting and administrative device than as
a system benefitting and empowering researchers
 This is the managements’ priorities – as always – focused on solving problems of the
administration itself rather than supporting core services…(said somewhat polemically )
•
•
Will ORCID become similar – how will management implement ORCID? For what
reasons?
ORCID in AAU – create a profile in three weeks or someone will do it for you. No
choice – and few know the whats and whys of ORCID (I believe) – I can control
visibility of my ORCID profile, but what if I am not allowed to ‘hide’
 Important question – how will transparency and ‘unique’ view into researchers’ activities
be
Who is the driver of change?
• Unclear – I believe – to many researchers who are
the drivers in these processes
 Librarians, research managers, management
•
•
•
•
•
Is ORCID something researchers have asked for?
Do most researchers know about ORCID?
How will it be implemented
What are the benefits for researchers?
Could it potentially become a more (broadly
based) researcher initiative
Challenges and potentials for
CRIS
(PURE/ORCID)
• Increased attention to:
 Researcher focus – what do researcher need and how can you
empower them?
 How can PURE/ORCID make life easier (good existing examples:
publications connected to projects, RSS-feeds on publications)
 Autonomy, ownership, co-producer, opportunities for
import/export
 Visualisation of networks and relations, connecting to others
 (new) connections between between people and between people
and content – recommendations, ’awareness’ of other’s activies