[Edling] ORCID: A Double-edged Sword?

Wed May 24 19:26:40 UTC 2017

Dear Edling colleagues,

I received an e-mail today from a well known journal in our field.  Several colleagues told me about receiving a similar letter in relation to other journals (all from Taylor & Francis).  It would seem like there is a movement taking place among a number of journals to shift from optional to required use of ORCID (https://orcid.org/) for authors and reviewers.  The Swedish Research Council already requires it for grant submissions.  While there are a number of potential benefits, it would seem to me that there are also ethical and moral issues to consider when it comes to the close tracking of researchers.  The recent sociopolitical circumstances in Turkey, Hungary and Poland come to mind.  Not to mention, at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, the violent oppression of researchers by the Nazi regime.

While I would not wish to prevent anyone from using ORCID if they find it useful, I do find it troubling that journals would now require us to register in a third party database (even one managed by a purportedly benign non-profit organization) in order to author or review papers.  I wrote the letter below in response to the message I received (the name of the editor and journal have been redacted here).  I put the question to the members of the list: How do you feel about this?  Should there be a wider conversation about this among researchers and publishers?

Best,

Francis

________________________________

Dear _____,

I am writing because I am deeply concerned about the move by _____ to require the use of ORCID.  I have long had strong ethical concerns about third party organizations, even a non-profit with a purportedly benign objective, developing databases and repositories of scholars.  There can be any number of unintended consequences of creating such a repository, not least related to their potential sociopolitical misuse.  One can look historically to the Nazi regime in the 1930s and 40s and their aggressive oppression of Jewish scholars and other academics doing 'dangerous' research or even more recently to the Trump administration seeking out scholars who are doing climate research that does not align with its political objectives.  In our own field of bi-/multilingualism, it is not too far of a leap to imagine that ultra-nationalist parties may gain control in certain European countries and seek out for sanction researchers who do work on plurilingualism and multiculturalism.  There is a real danger that repositories like ORCID could more easily facilitate such academic oppression.

In addition, in the information age and the rise of 'big data', information privacy and security is no small matter.  While an organization such as ORCID has seemingly good intentions at this time, we are nonetheless contributing to a database of personal/professional data in order to participate.  We thus give control of this information over to an organization that may use it in the future with unpredictable and unintended consequences:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/if-youre-not-paranoid-youre-crazy/407833/

There is an internet adage that "if you are not the client, you are the product."  This has become apparent for several popular academic repositories that employ user-submitted information and materials for their own objectives:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/02/01/who-isnt-profiting-off-the-backs-of-researchers/#.WSWrMo21upo

While many researchers today opt in to repositories such as Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, or ORCID, others have chosen not to for ethical and moral reasons.  Perhaps they are concerned about privacy, big data, and potential future (mis)use of information.  Perhaps they do not wish to facilitate easy tracking of research by certain government regimes or radicals.  While published research is publicly available, regimes have in the past at least been required to create their own repositories of 'dangerous' scholars.

There are no doubt potential benefits of contemporary research repositories, but there are potential dangers as well.  It should be the choice of individual scholars to participate in them or not.  When a journal like___forces a researcher to participate in ORCID, we are faced with the dilemma of comprising our moral and ethical values or being excluded from the journal's academic community.  It is a bargain that I would rather not to have to strike.

I implore the editorial leadership of _____ to make the use of ORCID optional for authors and reviewers.

Yours sincerely,

Francis Hult

--
Francis M. Hult, PhD
Associate Professor
Centre for Languages and Literature
Lund University

Web: http://www.sol.lu.se/en/person/FrancisHult<https://webmail.lu.se/owa/redir.aspx?SURL=EpnktrfB15IHPeIrBHQoeWbPqDJ0e0hlxBDhQUiAxeAZw3-Cx0LTCGgAdAB0AHAAOgAvAC8AdwB3AHcALgBzAG8AbAAuAGwAdQAuAHMAZQAvAGUAbgAvAHAAZQByAHMAbwBuAC8ARgByAGEAbgBjAGkAcwBIAHUAbAB0AA..&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.sol.lu.se%2fen%2fperson%2fFrancisHult>

Editor, Educational Linguistics book series
http://www.springer.com/series/5894

Co-editor, Contributions to the Sociology of Language book series
http://www.degruyter.com/view/serial/16644

Recent Book: Research Methods in Language Policy and Planning: A Practical Guide
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118308395.html

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