Dear all,
German National library for Science and Technology (TIB) is going to implement the Research Organization Registry (ROR) Identifier support for OJS as a plugin.
We have prepared a preliminary specification and are open for suggestions and requirement specifications and for active discussions.
opened 03:31PM - 25 May 20 UTC
closed 07:08PM - 28 Jan 21 UTC
Major Feature
**Describe the problem you would like to solve**
When submitting a manuscript, … authors and contributors can indicate their affiliation in a free text field. A free-text field lends itself to many different ways of writing a name (e.g., UC Berkeley vs. University of California, Berkeley). A result of many different name variations is that searching/tracking research outputs by institutions is not always going to be accurate or comprehensive.
The unambiguous statement of their affiliation is also important to the editors of a journal influencing the reputation of their journal. It can also be useful for the publisher to have this information in an unambiguous way in case they have a specific publication/pricing arrangement with specific institutions.
**Describe the solution you'd like**
In contrast to a free-text field a single unique identifier would allow for an institution to be designated in the same way every time. The [Research Organization Registry](https://ror.org) offers a globally unique, open, and persistent identifier for research organizations that could be integrated into OJS via the [ROR API](https://github.com/ror-community/ror-api). In the user profile from each user (submitting author, contributor, or editor) starts to type in the affiliation field and the corresponding institution from ROR is suggested. The user’s affiliation could be displayed on the landing pages of articles and on the about pages (in the editors section). The affiliation information should be pulled into the different OJS metadata outputs (Crossref, DataCite) so that the information can be shared in a machine-readable way.
**Who is asking for this feature?**
Journal editors, journal administrators, authors, publishers, funders
**Options to Consider**
| Remarks | Suggested by | Status|
| ---| --- | --- |
| Start and end dates of the information for multiple institutions| @mfenner | General Comment |
| Granalarity of the ROR | @mfenner | Has to be considered, when ROR has this support|
| extra fields for postal adress| @mfenner | Thoughts welcome |
**Additional information**
<img width="1194" alt="Landing_page_ROR_ID" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6583633/82825920-68522980-9eac-11ea-8b88-c6fea05b0f43.png">
_The name of the affiliated institution could be linked to the ROR entry on the article landing page (optionally followed by the ROR icon)._
<img width="1188" alt="Editorial_Team_ROR" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6583633/82825998-920b5080-9eac-11ea-8736-56acace4c8c4.png">
_The name of the affiliated institution could be linked to the ROR entry on the editorial team page (optionally followed by the ROR icon)._
_The ROR auto-suggest functionality could be implemented in OJS similar to the Dryad implementation of ROR._
**Issues related to this feature request:**
The functionality of the [OJS funder plugin](https://github.com/ajnyga/funding/) is similar to what could be the ROR plugin.
https://github.com/pkp/pkp-lib/issues/2787 , the only difference being that it should be piped into the DataCite and Crossref outputs (DataCite currently accepts ROR, Crossref will start to do so from Q3 2020).
Being able to collect and add RORs in association with OJS users (editors, reviewers, authors) so that in the review process journals could avoid conflicts of interest in accidentally inviting a reviewer from the same institution of the submitting author (of course there are cases where this would be fine).
If you are interested in participating in the disucssion of the ROR support for OJS, please be free to either write in this forum entry or preferably in the github issue.
3 Likes