ORCID and the Fediverse: What Can We Do with Public Information?

Abstract

ORCID is an identification scheme and bibliographic database for academics that aims to make information about researchers’ works widely and easily accessible. The Fediverse is a collection of interoperable social media platforms where people can follow each other across platform boundaries to read and share text posts or other media. Between these two environments, we observe contrasting social norms around “public data” and conflicting expectations on how personal information may be stored and republished. During the early design phase of a tool to bridge ORCID data into the Fediverse and make individual ORCID records followable on open social platforms, we face a need to connect and resolve these differences to prevent avoidable conflicts. This article documents these norms and expectations as well as our approach to connect and bridge them.