ROR is seeking a short-term curation support contractor as registry curation activities continue to expand. Please consider submitting an application and help spread the word to your networks!

About ROR and registry curation

The Research Organization Registry (ROR) is a community-led registry of open, sustainable, usable, and unique identifiers for every research organization in the world.

ROR is a cross-organization collaborative led by California Digital Library, Crossref, and DataCite. Each organization provides input on decisions and overall strategy that support the growth and sustainability of ROR by engaging in outreach to funders, potential adopters, and other stakeholders in their respective networks.

The ROR registry includes IDs and metadata for more than 105,000 research organizations and counting. ROR receives regular input from its global community of users and stakeholders about records that should be added to or updated in the registry. ROR also seeks and incorporates input from the broader community about policies and processes for maintaining registry data. We review and process this feedback through a centralized process and according to metadata policies established and maintained by ROR’s curation advisory board and metadata curation lead. All requests are publicly visible in an open Github repository so that the process is as transparent as possible. New registry releases are published on a rolling basis, approximately once a month.

Since officially launching its new curation model in early 2022, ROR’s volume of curation activities has been increasing steadily. In order to keep up with this growth, we are looking to scale resourcing on the ROR team accordingly, beginning with hiring short-term contract support to help maintain the pipeline of requests. Contract support will better equip ROR to be as responsive as possible to requests, to work with community members interested in submitting unique types of requests such as bulk lists of organizations, and to pursue special strategic projects such as the reconciliation of Crossref’s Open Funder Registry with ROR. This short-term support will also allow us to assess bigger-picture and longer-term needs with regard to curation staffing.

The project description and application instructions follow below.

Curation Contractor: General responsibilities

• Triage new curation requests using Github-based and command-line tools
• Evaluate accuracy and validate requests by researching information in ROR, on organizational websites, and other sources such as Google Scholar
• Review bulk requests as assigned by the metadata curation lead
• Provide recommendations to curation lead and curation advisory board about how requests should be processed
• Provide input to curation lead and curation advisory board to help improve the curation process and registry data quality
• Provide support to curation lead and curation advisory board if troubleshooting is needed

Contract deliverables

Curation backlog management and processing

Carry out Github- and command-line-based workflow to triage new curation requests and keep backlog small. Evaluate metadata accuracy and complete requests by researching information in ROR, on organizational websites, and other sources such as Google Scholar. Provide recommendations to curation lead and curation advisory board about how requests should be processed

Project support

Review bulk requests as identified and assigned by the metadata curation lead. Provide support to curation lead and curation advisory board if troubleshooting is needed

Data analysis/metadata Q&A

Identify opportunities to improve ROR metadata quality and address metadata quality issues at scale.

Skills and qualifications

• Familiarity with Github issues and projects
• Familiarity with command line operations
• Ability to use basic functions of the ROR API (we can provide training)
• Ability to perform intelligent searches on the ROR website (multiple queries etc) and related authority sources (e.g. Wikidata, ISNI, ORCID)
• Excel/spreadsheet data analysis
• Attention to detail
• Professional proficiency in English and at least one other language
• Ability to search and analyze information about research institutions and scholarly publications
• Knowledge of research/publishing landscape and persistent identifiers for scholarly communications desirable but not required

Position details

This is a part-time contracted position (up to 20 hours a week) for approximately three months. This position will be in contract with Crossref but will be accountable to the three organizations that operate ROR (Crossref, California Digital Library, and DataCite).

All work will be performed remotely. The contractor will have no set work hours.

To apply

To apply, send a resume, statement of interest, and rate schedule to jobs@ror.org. Proposals will be reviewed until the position is filled. Review of proposals will begin September 15.

Equal opportunity statement

ROR, and the collaborating organizations behind it, California Digital Library, Crossref, and DataCite, are committed to non-discrimination and making opportunities available to anyone without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy or a condition related to pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, uniform service member status, or any other protected class under applicable law.