[Edling] ORCID: A Double-edged Sword?

Wed May 24 21:38:26 UTC 2017

I see requiring the use of ORCiD in order to review or publish in peer review journals a threat to academic freedom. My personal data should not need to be shared, archived and potentially sold and analyzed in order for me to carry out research.

 As with all digital tools and communities I belong to, it is my choice to share personal information to use their services. I will do the same here. >From now on, no journal that requires me to use ORCiD in order to review or publish will benefit from my scholarship or free labor.

******************************
Shannon Sauro, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Past President, Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO)
Department of Culture, Languages & Media, Malmö University
Malmö högskola | Lärande och samhälle | 205 06 Malmö | Sweden
@Academia.edu<https://mah.academia.edu/ShannonSauro> | @Slideshare<http://www.slideshare.net/Shansauro> | @Twitter <https://twitter.com/shansauro> | @Web<http://ssauro.info>

________________________________
From: Edling <edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se> on behalf of Curry, Mary Jane <mjcurry at Warner.Rochester.edu>
Sent: 24 May 2017 22:15:02
To: The Educational Linguistics List
Subject: Re: [Edling] ORCID: A Double-edged Sword?

Very good questions, Francis, and thanks for bringing this up here. I’ve received 3 such notifications (not actually requests yet, which just means more emails to come). Considering we are providing the reviewing service gratis, we are under no obligation to provide this information. These concerns about tracking our activity are well founded and it’s not clear how it benefits researchers/reviewers. We could pull an academic Lysistrata move and refuse to provide these id numbers and see what happens!

MJ

 --
Mary Jane Curry, PhD
Associate Professor
Warner Graduate School of Education
University of Rochester
474 LeChase Hall, 585.273.5934

Co-chair, UR Faculty Senate, 2016-17, 2017-18
Director, Warner Writing Support Services
Associate Editor, Brief Research Reports, TESOL Quarterly

From: Edling <edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se>> on behalf of Francis Hult <francis.hult at englund.lu.se<mailto:francis.hult at englund.lu.se>>
Reply-To: Educational List <edling at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling at bunner.geol.lu.se>>
Date: Wednesday, May 24, 2017 at 3:26 PM
To: Educational List <edling at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling at bunner.geol.lu.se>>
Subject: [Edling] ORCID: A Double-edged Sword?

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/<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__orcid.org_&d=DwMFAw&c=kbmfwr1Yojg42sGEpaQh5ofMHBeTl9EI2eaqQZhHbOU&r=_rMj7-Pgoc9IWqUnTVAZ6aLZ1r8V9PaRLjSW-DQVx4E&m=vMesephz5zJi5_Z_U2Rkx_l4OCQrw5tZxm79WyabpJw&s=mugb0d-Y0efSANVr6kQDCE__toG6w7ID9lxX8JXxQdc&e=>) 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/<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.theatlantic.com_magazine_archive_2015_11_if-2Dyoure-2Dnot-2Dparanoid-2Dyoure-2Dcrazy_407833_&d=DwMFAw&c=kbmfwr1Yojg42sGEpaQh5ofMHBeTl9EI2eaqQZhHbOU&r=_rMj7-Pgoc9IWqUnTVAZ6aLZ1r8V9PaRLjSW-DQVx4E&m=vMesephz5zJi5_Z_U2Rkx_l4OCQrw5tZxm79WyabpJw&s=kd0CW2H6A7XjggEHhUU-2sszTgUxEWWqqD3HOYwIvro&e=>

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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__blogs.discovermagazine.com_crux_2017_02_01_who-2Disnt-2Dprofiting-2Doff-2Dthe-2Dbacks-2Dof-2Dresearchers_-23.WSWrMo21upo&d=DwMFAw&c=kbmfwr1Yojg42sGEpaQh5ofMHBeTl9EI2eaqQZhHbOU&r=_rMj7-Pgoc9IWqUnTVAZ6aLZ1r8V9PaRLjSW-DQVx4E&m=vMesephz5zJi5_Z_U2Rkx_l4OCQrw5tZxm79WyabpJw&s=X9xjd5rMR1lUDKYXCgBNp-jE2MP26J7A_Rr3Ze0P95M&e=>

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://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__webmail.lu.se_owa_redir.aspx-3FSURL-3DEpnktrfB15IHPeIrBHQoeWbPqDJ0e0hlxBDhQUiAxeAZw3-2DCx0LTCGgAdAB0AHAAOgAvAC8AdwB3AHcALgBzAG8AbAAuAGwAdQAuAHMAZQAvAGUAbgAvAHAAZQByAHMAbwBuAC8ARgByAGEAbgBjAGkAcwBIAHUAbAB0AA..-26URL-3Dhttp-253a-252f-252fwww.sol.lu.se-252fen-252fperson-252fFrancisHult&d=DwMFAw&c=kbmfwr1Yojg42sGEpaQh5ofMHBeTl9EI2eaqQZhHbOU&r=_rMj7-Pgoc9IWqUnTVAZ6aLZ1r8V9PaRLjSW-DQVx4E&m=vMesephz5zJi5_Z_U2Rkx_l4OCQrw5tZxm79WyabpJw&s=ec3pHecIkEKnk5mSRU8hyWzqjvru8mAdqFiTGI517ug&e=>

Editor, Educational Linguistics book series
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