Building Momentum in Open Science through Persistent Identifiers: The Final Outcomes of the ORCID Implementation Pilot at the University of Waterloo

Abstract

Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are foundational to advancing open scholarship, improving research visibility, and enabling interoperability across systems. In 2024, the University of Waterloo launched an ORCID Implementation Pilot to strengthen researcher identity management and streamline workflows for researchers and staff. This initiative began as a collaboration between the Library, Office of Research, and Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA), aligning institutional priorities with national and international momentum for PID adoption.

Our presentation will share the story of this pilot as a momentum-building collaboration. We will outline the project’s objectives, including integrating ORCID into institutional systems, supporting researchers in creating and maintaining ORCID, and leveraging ORCID to reduce redundancy and improve the consistency and reuse of researcher information. Key highlights will include our success metrics, lessons learned from user engagement, technical and organizational challenges, and strategies we developed for fostering buy-in as we strive toward ORCID becoming embedded in everyday academic and administrative processes.

We will demonstrate how a single pilot can contribute to collective progress toward a sustainable, interoperable research ecosystem. We will discuss future directions and how emerging faculty partnerships serve as proof-of-concept for how ORCID enabled reporting can scale as ORCID has the potential to reshape how researcher information is collected, maintained, and reused across the whole institution. Attendees will gain practical insights into planning and executing ORCID adoption initiatives, as well as how leveraging cross-institutional collaboration can support project success.

This session aligns with the conference theme of Creative Collaborations, Collective Momentum by showcasing how partnerships within and beyond an institution can drive meaningful change in research infrastructure and open science practices.