I have been working as an ORCID advocate since October after my friend told my about the project. As a PhD student seeking to progress with a future career in academia, becoming an ORCID advocate seemed like a great opportunity to get involved with the scheme and to find out more about how to develop my own research activities and connect with other PhD and early career researchers along the way at Kent.
My work with ORCID so far has mostly taken place off-campus as I currently only commute into Kent a couple of times a week. This has led me to think of other ways of getting the message out about ORCID instead of through the usual avenues of going around departments handing out posters and flyers and organizing meetings. Like most researchers, emails are important lifeline for me to connect with other researchers, organize meetings and to find out about conferences and career events. So it seemed like a sensible idea to start getting the ball rolling about the scheme.
The first task I was assigned was to email around all the schools at Kent (and there are a fair few!) with information about ORCID in the hope this would then be circulated around staff and postgraduate researchers. This has actually proved to be quite successful and I have received many really positive responses about the scheme. Even after mentioning the ORCID briefly to fellow PhD students, many have seemed to pick up on the scheme and were considering signing up. Administrators from the departments have also sent follow up emails with enquires about how ORCID works in conjunction with the existing Kent Academic Repository (KAR) scheme.
In the up and coming weeks, I am really looking forward to being involved in a pop-up event and further workshops where I will have a chance to talk about ORCID (this time in person)! The ORCID advocates have also been given some great merchandise, in the form of business cards and postcards, which will certainly help people to get to grips with the basics of the scheme. Using email has been a great way to start spreading the word about ORCID and I hope to carry on with the conversation on campus.