How the ROR Community Seeks to Streamline Research Organizations

By Grace Hamburger on Jan 22, 2020
eContent Pro
How the ROR Community Seeks to Streamline Research Organizations

With the massive amount of Academic work in circulation today, it is becoming increasingly important to create unique, open IDs and metadata for important aspects of research to stay organized and track all of your assets. Digital object identifiers (DOIs) are assigned for individual articles, books, and journals, while Open Researcher and Contributor IDs (ORCID IDs) are identifiers created to track an individual researcher and their real-time achievements. But what about research organizations? Finding funding can be tricky, but the community-led Research Organization Registry database strives to streamline the process.

Research Organization Registry

The Research Organization Registry (ROR) is a project launched by and for the research community in early 2019. The goal was to create “an open, sustainable, usable, and unique identifier for every research organization in the world,” meaning that ROR is essentially a database for research organizations. This scope includes research administrators, policy administrators, funders, librarians, institutional repositories, and more. Almost 100,000 organizations have so far been indexed on ROR with unique IDs and associated metadata. Academic and nonprofit groups alike are continuing efforts to build this database, which is completely free and open to all users. ROR IDs are now supported in Crossref and DataCite metadata, and more partnerships are being pursued, such as data repositories, manuscript tracking systems, and grant application systems.

What Makes ROR Different?

ROR was established to create a free, open registry of top-tier research organizations, and though ROR is not the first to generate these digital identifiers, it aims to be the most inclusive. Websites like Wikidata and Crossref's Funder Registry have been creating IDs for organizations for a while, but rather than fight these established IDs, ROR is mapping its own to match. It interlopes with other companies rather than competing against them to make it as easy as possible for the scholarly community to find these important research organizations. While ROR is collecting these existing IDs, it is also creating original IDs for institutions that do not have one, therefore making a full-service, single-source website. Above all, ROR was created for the academic by the academic. This easy access to a complete database of all major research-oriented groups can save a researcher valuable time and effort and could make all the difference when time is of the essence.

The Research Organization Registry is not a new concept, but it strives to set itself apart from the pack by remaining transparent, current, relevant, and free. After you’ve navigated your funding and your manuscript is complete, take advantage of a thorough content evaluation with eContent Pro’s scientific and scholarly editing service!

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