UBC ROR - the "Where" of persistent identifiers for linked digital assets
Tuesday May 13, 2025
From 2:30pm to 2:45pm
The Research Organization Registry (ROR), launched in late 2019, addresses a critical gap in the scholarly infrastructure by enhancing the network of open persistent identifiers used to track and discover research outputs. The academic community requires reliable ways to answer key questions about research: the "who," the "what," and the "where." ORCID IDs identify the "who" by linking research to individual scholars, while DOIs are assigned to publications, datasets, and other research outputs to define the "what." Prior to ROR, an open and non-proprietary identifier for the "where"—the institutional affiliations and organizations behind the research—was notably absent.
Starting with mid-2024, the University of British Columbia (UBC) Library is using the ROR identifier as a standard way to refer to digital assets managed by our institution. ROR identifier allows us (and others) to answer questions like, “How many datasets have been published by researchers at the University of British Columbia?” Without ROR identifiers, this would be a complicated process of reconciling myriad variations (think “U of BC,” “UBC,” “U of British Columbia”, etc.) ROR identifiers are now hardcoded into all digital items in the UBC Open Collections platform, making it straightforward to collate and harvest these in one place.
