Connect Your Field Station to the Global Research Infrastructure with RORs

Field stations can leverage the Global Research Infrastructure to improve ethical fieldwork. The Global Research Infrastructure is a knowledge infrastructure or “the robust networks of people, artifacts, and institutions that generate, share, and maintain specific knowledge about human and natural worlds” (Edwards, 2010). The network is built by using persistent identifiers. Ways of connecting include:

• Citing papers, projects, output management plans, physical samples, datasets, and software (+ many more) with Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). DOIs are registered by two primary organizations—DataCite and Crossref. Crossref is primarily used for journal publications. DataCite was started primarily to support DOIs for datasets but has expanded to support DOIs for all types of resources.
• Identifying and connecting researchers to their work with Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCIDs) . Traditionally, we have thought of only connecting researchers to their published outputs, like journal articles, but we are moving upstream to use ORCIDs to connect researchers to their proposals, output management plans, samples, and projects.
• Disambiguating organizations with Research Organization Registry (RORs). For instance, the letters NSF could stand for the National Science Foundation, the National Sleep Foundation, or the National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka. When RORs are used with the acronym or name, we know which organization should get credit for research outputs.

These four organizations—DataCite, Crossref, ROR and ORCID make up the core of the Global Research Infrastructure. These are tools that field stations can leverage without paying for all the developmental costs. The next section has steps to start using this infrastructure right away.

Field Station Action Steps:

1. Does your organization have a ROR? Search here.
   • Yes! Great. We will talk about how to use it in the next step.
   • No? It’s ok. Submit an application to add your organization here.
   • Is your organization there, but something is not quite right? You can request corrections or updates here.
   • Here is an example ROR for the Tetiaroa Ecostation
     
2. Things are connected to your ROR by including the ROR in the Crossref or DataCite metadata as part of affiliations or contributors.
   • Check connections to your ROR by searching the DataCite Commons for your organization.
     • Here is an example of the Tetiaroa Commons page
   • Here is more information on our approach to connecting research to field stations.