DOIs are used to identified papers, presentations, datasets, programs, figures, audio files, video files, amongst other things. ORCID iDs are used to identify researchers.
Why using ORCID iDs instead of DOIs to identify researchers?
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12Because people are not things. – jakebeal Jun 21 '16 at 16:21
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1@jakebeal If you consider this is an answer, you're welcome to write one. – Franck Dernoncourt Jun 21 '16 at 16:44
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2And how would you resolve such a DOI...? – Jun 21 '16 at 17:19
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2@NajibIdrissi E.g. to any digital location the researcher wants to. (by the way I don't understand people downvoting before getting the answer to their question) – Franck Dernoncourt Jun 21 '16 at 17:21
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4I didn't realize I was the same object as my webpage. – Jun 21 '16 at 17:24
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@NajibIdrissi I didn't say so. – Franck Dernoncourt Jun 21 '16 at 17:25
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2@NajibIdrissi The DOI of the researcher would point to some resource containing information about the researcher, just like the DOI of a paper would point to some resource containing information about the paper. I agree that in the case of a paper, the information is more complete that in the case of the researcher (ignoring paywall issues). – Franck Dernoncourt Jun 21 '16 at 17:35
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2Why should DOIs be used for this purpose? – ff524 Jun 21 '16 at 18:07
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2@NajibIdrissi: technically a DOI is a "digital identifier of an object" and not an "identifier of a digital object". So if we consider people to be things, then we would fall under the purview of DOI which recommends a digital avatar representation of non-digital objects. It may be worth pointing out further that the DOI Metadata Kernel is designed in such a way compatible with use for identifying people/parties/organizations. – Willie Wong Jun 21 '16 at 18:09
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2It is perhaps more clear to point to this link instead: one of the required fields for DOI metadata is a specification of the type of object that the DOI refers to. Currently the two registered possibilities are "creations" (everything from articles to videos) and "parties" (which include people, animals, organizations etc.) – Willie Wong Jun 21 '16 at 18:11
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1@ff524 To avoid having different identifier schemes. – Franck Dernoncourt Jun 21 '16 at 18:13
1 Answers
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Because I would rather be an Orc than an Object. [/joke]
More seriously: from the horse's mouth
Our members will be aware that CrossRef has been exploring the possibility of creating an “author DOI” or “contributor ID” system. In doing so, it has become clear that the issues and use-cases involved in identifying researchers span a broad collection of stakeholders including libraries, institutions, funders, publishers and, of course researchers themselves. In short, this is not primarily “a publisher problem.” As such, we believe that the ORCID approach to creating an inclusive and open organization representing all the stakeholders in the scholarly communications process represents the best chance of creating a successful contributor identification system
The main problem with using DOI to identify authors is that the DOI model dishes out DOI identifiers through registration agencies, which usually charge some fee for the assignment. The use of registration agencies is fundamental to the design and operation of the DOI scheme. The main advantage of the ORCID scheme, as indicated above by CrossRef, one of the DOI registration agencies, is its openness and inclusiveness. Obtaining an ORCID is relatively simple.
As an aside: ORCID is a subset of the ISNI and is used for identification of researchers. For more general contributors to media, the ISNI is preferred.
Willie Wong
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2Thanks, very interesting. My take away is that, following CrossRef's rationale, there is no strong technical issue, but mostly political ones (lack of openness of the DOI system, fee to create a DOI, absence of some key stakeholders). – Franck Dernoncourt Jun 21 '16 at 18:53
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1There are technical issues here. ORCID offers an extensive set of APIs and metadata tailored to the use cases it serves (identifying people and their activities).
Put simply, it's not a one size fits all world for these things, and identifiers are supplemented by specialist services and metadata.
Crossref focuses on services/metadata around identifying papers while Datacite (another DOI registration agency) offers different metadata and services for the identification of (mainly) data.
– tom Sep 15 '16 at 12:56