[Edling] ORCID: A Double-edged Sword?

Thu May 25 14:20:38 UTC 2017

I’m going to chime in on this because I agree with Francis’ summation.  What further alarms me is that ORCID has no stated way to “opt out” or remove your account and data once you have created it.  I teach and work at the University of Pennsylvania, where I participate in Security and Privacy of Information Assessments, and this lack of opt-out or removal would be a big red flag if it were required here.

I’m going to have to check to see which grad programs require publications and whose fields are covered by T&F journals, because that could become an issue here.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention and thank you to all for the discussion!
Elizabeth
--
Elizabeth C. Scheyder, Ph.D., P.E.
Critical Writing Program Instructor &
SAS Computing Instructional Technology Project Leader
University of Pennsylvania

On May 25, 2017, at 7:49 AM, Francis Hult <francis.hult at englund.lu.se<mailto:francis.hult at englund.lu.se>> wrote:

Dear Diane,

My primary concern is that a major, for-profit company (Taylor & Francis whose parent company is Informa) now wants to require us as authors/reviewers to become part of a global registry of scholars that gives us personal identification numbers.  However benign it may seem, shouldn't we have a choice about whether or not to be in a private, non-governmental registry?  When the options are to join the registry or be excluded from the major journals in our field, it is not much of a choice.  Informa is wielding its corporate power.

It is also worth reflecting on whether or not ORCID is as benign as it seems.  Its partners include major, for-profit publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, and Taylor & Francis.    It also includes other entities who are in the business of facilitating the use of "bibliometric measures as a way of measuring productivity based on a very limited understanding of what such measures mean" about which you raise a concern (that I also share).  It also includes companies who are in the business of (profiting from) tracking people and data mining (https://orcid.org/members).  For example,

Academic Analytics
"Academic Analytics is a full-service provider of business intelligence solutions for higher education leaders, providing comprehensive faculty scholarly productivity data and custom solutions to facilitate monitoring, assessment and improvement at all levels of the university."

Clarivate Analytics
"Clarivate Analytics, formerly the IP & Science Business of Thomson Reuters, accelerates the pace of innovation by providing trusted insights and analytics to customers around the world, enabling them to discover, protect and commercialize new ideas, faster."

Who will the future partners be?  How will they make use of unique personal identification numbers for all published researchers in the world?  What is the potential to monetize the registry?  Who profits from our personal information?  How might ORCID numbers be used to monitor our intellectual networks?  How could this help (oppressive) governments track researchers?  How will the registry contribute to the further commodification of our work?  Will it facilitate the next generation of "h-index" that will measure researchers using more robust influence metrics like we currently see for social media such as Klout (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klout) or Kred (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kred_Influence_Measurement)?

If people, such as the John Smiths, want to opt in to ORCID, they should be able to do so if they wish.  Should we all be forced to join a registry with unknown implications and unintended consequences?  I would contend that this is not a side issue, but at the very heart of the neoliberalization of intellectual and academic work.  Should we simply accept it as convenient and inevitable?

Best,
Francis

________________________________
From: Edling <edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se>> on behalf of Diane Pecorari <diane.pecorari at cityu.edu.hk<mailto:diane.pecorari at cityu.edu.hk>>
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2017 03:57
To: The Educational Linguistics List
Subject: Re: [Edling] ORCID: A Double-edged Sword?

Dear Francis,

Good that you've raised this, and in a nuanced and thoughtful way, as is your wont. You're right that the history of the last century should make us leary of compulsory records of anything.

But particularly with respect to submissions to a journal (requiring an ORCID of peer reviewers may be a different  case) I struggle to see that the sword is actually double-edged.  A name and an email address are all that's required to create an ORCID ID. Journals collect much more information when an article is submitted. ORCID, unlike journal publishers and Academia.edu<http://academia.edu/> or Research Gate, is a not-for-profit.

Of course, if an ORCID is  to be used meaningfully, you do need to associate your publications with it. But publications are, well, public. Why would anyone publish an article under their own name and not wish to be recognised as the author of it?

One post suggested that associating publications with a unique identifier should be a choice for those who think it will benefit them, and that touches on the right to be associated with your publications, but there's also a responsibility.  If a J. Smith publishes work of poor quality, there are a lot of other J. Smiths out there who don't want to be mistaken as the author of it. This isn't much of a problem for Pecoraris or Hults, but it is a real issue for the Smiths and Singhs and Chans of the academic community.

It's not that I particularly want to defend ORCID, it's more a question of priorities.  One response to your post promised to boycott journals which require an ORCID ID. If I were to to get that exercised about a problem related to academic publishing and bibliometrics, lots of other issues would have priority, including but by no means limited to:
--the fact that most journals are published by for-profit organisations which add increasingly little value in exchange for the work we contribute for free;
--the growing phenomenon of journal publishers running having (expensive) language-checking businesses, so that scholars whose first language is not English find themselves invited to pay for the editorial assistance which will help them publish their work;
--the fact that institutions increasingly use bibliometric measures as a way of measuring productivity based on a very limited understanding of what such measures mean.

In this light, submitting an article to Taylor & Francis and objecting to a demand for an ORCID seems very much like swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat.

All the best,

Diane

Diane Pecorari

From: Edling [mailto:edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se] On Behalf Of Francis Hult
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2017 6:29 AM
To: The Educational Linguistics List <edling at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling at bunner.geol.lu.se>>
Subject: Re: [Edling] ORCID: A Double-edged Sword?

Hi Wayne,

There is a difference between an organization constructing a catalog of publicly available publications (as LLBA or Google Scholar do) and forcing researchers into a global registry of scholars that assigns us personal identification numbers.  For a publisher or funding agency to require such registry is chilling.

Taylor & Francis controls a large number of journals in our field so there is an almost Borg-like 'resistance is futile' element to this.  That they made the decision without consulting journal editors is all the more alarming.  There is a danger if we simply submit to 'big data' because it seems inevitable.  We have no idea how the information in the ORCID registry will be used in the future or if the benefits will outweigh the threats to personal liberty and academic freedom.  At the very least, we should be given a choice about whether or not we want to submit to ORCID, not the Faustian bargain of complying or being shut out of publishing in the major journals in our field.

If someone believes their identity is easily confused and wishes to disambiguate using ORCID, they should have the option of using ORCID.  That some opt to do so should not mean a requirement for rest of us to join a global registry.  There is no shortage of opportunities to make our work visible and accessible online that we can freely choose to use.

Best,
Francis

________________________________
From: Edling <edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se>> on behalf of Wright, Wayne E <wewright at purdue.edu<mailto:wewright at purdue.edu>>
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2017 22:21
To: The Educational Linguistics List
Subject: Re: [Edling] ORCID: A Double-edged Sword?

Thanks Francis for raising this issue.

We just learned recently of the ORCID requirement for contributors to our T&F journal. Journal editors were not consulted on this beforehand.

While I see value in the points raised, I also feel the point is somewhat moot as anyone who engages in public scholarship today will have their work indexed by 3rd party indexes. One can opt out of ORCID or refuse to publish in journals that require it, but their work is going to show up in a Google search whether they like it or not, as well as any indexes (like ERIC or Ebsco) that journals use ,and that we scholars rely on to find each other’s work.

The oppressive regimes of the past did not have Google or ORCID and yet seemed to have no problem identifying “subservient” scholars.

A broader question may be what is the value of conducting scholarship in the 21st Century if one’s work is not accessible to those it can benefit? And is it even possible to prevent the same work from being visible to those who may wish to use it for nefarious purposes? Is this a risk we need to be willing to take if we want to engage in the type of scholarship we do?

One could argue that at the very least ORCID helps to disambiguate scholars so they are not falsely accused of authoring work by others with same or similar names.

To me a larger and more immediate concern is the growing use and abuse of bibliometrics that these third-party repositories and indexes are enabling. Some institutions are going as far as giving 1 to 5 star ratings of their faculty based on bibliometrics – despite the deep flaws of these measures and questions about what these metrics actually measure and mean. It’s the equivalent of the abusive practice of rating teachers based on value-added measures drawn from highly questionable student high-stakes test data. I just learned of a new book on this issue I am looking forward to reading:

Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation: Uses and Abuses
Yves Gingras<https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1?ie=UTF8&text=Yves+Gingras&search-alias=digital-text&field-author=Yves+Gingras&sort=relevancerank> (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Bibliometrics-Research-Evaluation-Foundations-Information-ebook/dp/B01LYQJ937/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495656880&sr=8-1&keywords=bibliometrics+and+research+evaluation+uses+and+abuses

Looking forward to hearing other’s thoughts on these issues!

-Wayne

--
Wayne E. Wright, PhD
Professor and Barbara I. Cook Chair of Literacy and Language

Purdue University
College of Education
Department of Curriculum & Instruction
Beering Hall of Liberal Arts and Education, Room 4108
100 N. University St.
West Lafayette, IN 47907
https://www.education.purdue.edu/faculty-profiles/name/wayne-wright/
Editor, Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement (www.jsaaea.org<http://www.jsaaea.org/>)
Co-Editor, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education (www.tandfonline.com/loi/hlie20<http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hlie20>)

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: The Educational Linguistics List <edling at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling at bunner.geol.lu.se>>
Date: Wednesday, May 24, 2017 at 3:26 PM
To: Edling Edling <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/) 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<http://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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