Researcher Identity Network THOR Launched

The THOR (Technical and Human infrastructure for Open Research) project for researcher identification has officially launched. THOR is a state-of-the-art identifier network built on services provided by ORCID and DataCite that will allow researchers to have a Persistent Identifier (PID) that will be maintained throughout their whole career. This will enable researchers to have their work uniquely attributed to them irrespectively of their career and institution changes.

The THOR project consortium is a made up of ten partners –British Library, ORCID, DataCite, CERN, EMBL-EBI, Pangaea, ANDS, DRYAD, Elsevier and PLoS– related to research in one way or another. It has been funded for 30 months by the European Commission. Over this term, accessible PID-based services will be provided to every researcher around the world with a federated PID infrastructure. It will work with established platforms and disciplinary communities to ensure that researchers benefit from the added value that PIDs can bring to existing infrastructure. The aim is to establish seamless integration among articles, data, and researchers.

THOR follows the recommendations from the ODIN (ORCID and DataCite Interoperability Network) project:

• Leverage two community-driven global PID initiatives for contributors (ORCID) and scientific artefacts (DataCite) to build tools to serve the evolving needs of the research community
• Deliver PID-based services to submit, identify, attribute, and cite artefacts, starting with four disciplinary communities: Biological and Medical sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Social Sciences and the Humanities
• Create PID integration and interoperability solutions for research institutions, libraries, data centres, publishers, and research funders
• Enhance the expertise of the European research community by running an intensive training programme, and creating a knowledge base for practitioners integrating PIDs into research information systems.

The project team will run workshops around Europe to teach how to benefit from the service. A network of ambassadors will help them in the task. People wishing to become an ambassador can contact them at [email protected]