A New Year at ROR

The end of January 2022 marked the third anniversary of ROR’s launch at PIDapalooza 2019 in Dublin. Continuing with a tradition from the prior two years (2020 in Lisbon, and 2021 on Zoom), we marked the occasion with a community celebration to reflect on ROR’s progress and discuss the work that lies ahead.

The 2022 ROR annual meeting consisted of 2 virtual sessions with around 100 community members from 26 different countries. We reviewed developments from 2021, discussed upcoming milestones in 2022, heard from ROR adopters about how ROR IDs are being implemented in a variety of settings, and brainstormed ideas for the future.

Snapshot of community feedback on future directions for ROR

Read on for a recap of the meeting’s highlights. Some of these will be covered in more detail in forthcoming blog posts, so stay tuned!

Changes on the ROR team

The new year for ROR also came with some changes on the ROR team. First of all, we are pleased to introduce Adam Buttrick as the newest member of the ROR pride. Adam has been hired as ROR’s metadata curation lead to coordinate ongoing updates and improvements to the registry and work closely with ROR’s curation advisory board to develop and implement ROR’s community-based curation model. A librarian and developer based in Los Angeles, USA, Adam previously worked as a data developer for the Getty Conservation Institute, as an implementation manager for OCLC’s Metadata Services, and for the University of Michigan’s Art, Architecture, and Engineering Library. We are excited and fortunate to have Adam working on the many aspects of ROR’s curation!

ROR’s technical team is undergoing a transition this month as our current Technical Lead, Esha Datta, is returning full-time to Crossref in March having been on loan to ROR for the past couple of years. Esha worked on the original ROR prototype back in 2018 and more recently developed ROR’s new infrastructure to support independent curation of the registry. We are grateful for Esha’s many contributions and sorry to see her go, but we know Crossref is eager to have her back.

ROR development work will remain in good hands as Liz Krznarich steps into the role of full-time Technical Lead. Based at DataCite, Liz joined the ROR team in late 2020 as our first Adoption Manager and has developed extensive guidance to support ROR users and integrators. With her keen understanding of how community stakeholders are relying on ROR, and her prior experience as Technical Lead at ORCID, Liz brings a broad skillset to the position. We will start recruiting soon to backfill Liz’s adoption-focused position.

Updates to registry data coming soon

ROR is preparing to release a new update to the registry. This update will be ROR’s first independent release following the planned separation from GRID. We know that many organizations have been waiting patiently over the past year for new ROR IDs to be created or for existing records to be corrected or updated. The complex infrastructure work required to support independent updates to the registry has taken longer than expected and we appreciate everyone’s patience. We will be communicating more details soon about the specific timing of the release and what it includes, as well as what to expect in future releases.

ROR’s journey to sustainability

As we have discussed previously, ROR has been charting a journey to sustainability that involves several components. ROR is supported through a combination of in-kind support from operating organizations, time-limited grant funds, and community contributions. In the coming years, ROR also plans to launch optional paid services. ROR’s sustainability strategy is geared at leveraging diverse sources of funding and establishing a broad base of community support. In 2022, ROR is focused on expanding its community funding model by formalizing a sustaining supporters program for organizations to participate in a collaborative approach to supporting ROR’s open infrastructure. More information about the program will be announced shortly. In the meantime, organizations wishing to contribute - or see which organizations have already signed on to support ROR - can do so here.

2021 was a busy year for ROR and 2022 is already off to a busy start! Thank you as always for your support.