This week I held the first briefing sessions for the ORCID advocate roles that form a key part of this project. Of the ten I can potentially recruit, the first four have been briefed and have begun their outreach in their respective academic schools.
I realise that four is a long way from the ten we need but they are so enthusiastic and full of great ideas, I don’t have any worries about their ability to do the job, or about my decision to allow them a freer reign over the events and methods of advocacy that they were to undertake. As I thought, each of them knows the structure of their department and the best channels to go through to effectively perform their roles.
ORCID as a product is of interest to everyone involved in research at an academic institution, from research Masters students, through PhD students and up into the academic and research staff in the departments, each group with slightly different concerns and priorities. The logic behind hiring PhD students and early career researchers is key to the success of the project, as they are a central point between the Masters students (who they have contact as fellow postgraduates/mentors/teachers), and the staff (which they work with). This is an idea that the first advocates have embraced – we’ll see how they get on.
After they have had a week or so to make their first connections and give their first talks to their peers, we are attending a half-day Open Access conference on campus where we are giving a talk, hosting a stand, and a sign-up booth where delegates can come and register for their ORCID iD with our guidance. After that we will be collating our FAQs from the intervening weeks and the conference onto the website, and preparing more detailed support documentation if the need for it is present beyond what can be fulfilled by the inbuilt ORCID documentation.
I’ll let you know how it goes!
More promotion for the remaining positions is my job for today, and chasing the designs for our handout materials, but thats another post!