Linking Researchers with their Research: Persistent identifiers, registries, and interoperability standards

While in some scientific disciplines researcher identification and data citation is an established community norm, lack of interoperability between identification systems for research works on the one hand and ambiguity of contributor names on the other remains a major hurdle. Improving the ease by which researchers are uniquely and unambiguously associated with their research contributions across systems and disciplines can support citability and in turn provide incentives to share works and datasets. This in turn can facilitate information flow and enable data re-use. In this presentation, we will illustrate the potential of coordinating persistent identifier initiatives across e-infrastructures using \textbf{ORCID} and the \textbf{ODIN Project}. ORCID is a community-driven organization that provides a registry of unique and persistent identifiers for researchers. The ORCID registry connects together existing but fragmented researcher identifiers, and stores persistent connections to publications, datasets, grants, and current and past affiliations. ODIN---the ORCID and DataCite Interoperability Framework---is a two-year EC project with the goal of connecting existing identifiers across multiple services and infrastructures. Together, these two efforts have supported improvements in the way author and contributor information is collected for publications and datasets that go a long way to addressing name ambiguity and citability problems in research communication.