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Introduction

The ORCID integration adds ORCID compatibility to the existing solutions for Authority control in DSpace. String names of authors are still being stored in DSpace metadata. The authority key field is leveraged to store a uniquely generated internal ID that links the author to more extended metadata, including the ORCID ID and alternative author names.

This extended metadata is stored and managed in a dedicated SOLR index, the DSpace authority cache.

Use case and high level benefits

The vision behind this project consists of the following two aspects:

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This proposal aims to provide user friendly features for both repository administrators as well as non- technical end users of the system. The addition of ORCID functionality to DSpace should not come at the cost of making the system more difficult for administrators and end users to use. Scope With this vision in mind, the project partners wanted to tackle the first phases for repository managers of existing DSpace repositories: ensuring that ORCIDs are properly associated with new works entering the system, as well as providing functionality to efficiently batch-update content already existing in the system, with unambiguous author identity information.

Enabling the ORCID authority control

If you wish to enable this feature, some changes are required to the dspace.cfg file. The first step is to activate the authority as a valid option for authority control, this is done by adding/setting an additional plugin in the  plugin.named.org.dspace.content.authority.ChoiceAuthority property. An example of this can be found below.

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event.dispatcher.default.consumers = authority, versioning, discovery, eperson, harvester

Importing existing authors & keeping the index up to date

When first enabled the authority index will be empty, to populate the authority index run the following script:

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This will iterate over every metadata under authority control and create records of them in the authority index. The metadata without an authority key will each be updated with an auto generated authority key. These will not be matched in any way with other existing records. The metadata with an authority key that does not already exist in the index will be indexed with those authority keys. The metadata with an authority key that already exist in the index will be re-indexed the same way. These records remain unchanged.

Different possible use cases for Index-authority script

Metadata value WITHOUT authority key in metadata

“Luyten, Bram” is present in the metadata without any authority key.
GOAL: “Luyten, Bram” gets added in the cache ONCE

All occurences of “Luyten, Bram” in the DSpace item metadata will become linked with the same generated uid.

Metadata that already has an authority key from an external source (NOT auto-generated by DSpace)

“Snyers, Antoine” is present with authority key “u12345”

The old authority key needs to be preserved in the item metadata and duplicated in the cache.
“u12345” will be copied to the authority cache and used as the authority key there.

Metadata that has already a new dspace generated uid authority key

Item metadata already contains an author with name “Haak, Danielle” and a uid in the authority field 3dda2571-6be8-4102-a47b-5748531ae286

This uid is preserved and no new record is being created in the authority index.

Processing on records in the authority cache

Running this script again will update the index and keep the index clean. For example if an author occurs in a single item and that item is deleted the script will need to be run again to remove it from the index. When run again it will remove all records that no longer have a link to existing authors in the database.

Submission of new DSpace items - Author lookup

The submissions forms have not changed much. The only thing you can notice is an extra button next to the input fields for the author names. Next to the Add button, which is common for all repeatable fields, there is the Lookup & Add button.

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To add an author without look-up, you don't go through the Look-up User Interface. Instead you simply use the "Add" button in the submissions forms.

Admin Edit Item

In the edit metadata page, under the values for the dc.contributor.author fields, an extra line shows the author ID together with a lock icon and a Lookup button. The author ID cannot be changed manually. However the Lookup button will help you change the author name and ID at the same time.

Clicking the Lookup button brings back the Lookup User Interface. This works just the same way as in the submission forms.

Editing existing items using Batch CSV Editing

Instructions on how to use the Batch CSV Editing are found on the Batch Metadata Editing documentation page.

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For each of the ORCID authors a lookup will be done and their names will be added to the metadata. All the non-ORCID authors will be added as well. The authority keys and solr records are added when the reported changes are applied.

Storage of related metadata

ORCID authorities not only link a digital identifier to a name. It regroups a load of metadata going from alternative names and email addresses to keywords about their works and much more. The metadata is obtained by querying the ORCID web services. In order to avoid querying the ORCID web services every time, all these related metadata is gathered in a "metadata authority cache" that DSpace can access directly.

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When set to true and this is script is run, if an authority record's information is updated the whole repository will be scanned for this authority. Every metadata field with this authority key will be updated with the value of the updated authority record.

Configuration

In the Enabling the ORCID authority control section, you have been told to add this block of configuration.

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• The solr.authority.server is the url to the solr core. Usually this would be on the solr.server next to the oai, search and statistics cores.
• authority.author.indexer.field.1 and the subsequent increments configure which fields will be indexed in the authority cache. However before adding extra fields into the solr cache, please read the section about Adding additional fields under ORCID.

That's it for the novelties. Moving on to the generic authority control properties:

• With the authority.controlled property every metadata field that needs to be authority controlled is configured. This involves every type of authority control, not only the fields for ORCID integration.
• The choices.plugin should be configured for each metadata field under authority control. Setting the value on SolrAuthorAuthority tells DSpace to use the solr authority cache for this metadatafield, cfr. Storage of related metadata.
• The choices.presention should be configured for each metadata field as well. The traditional values for this property are select|suggest|lookup. A new value, authorLookup, has been added to be used in combination with the SolrAuthorAuthority choices plugin. While the other values can still be used, the authorLookup provides a richer user interface in the form of a popup on the submission page.
• The browse indexes need to point to the new authority-controlled index: webui.browse.index.2 = author:metadata:dc.contributor.*,dc.creator:text should become webui.browse.index.2 = author:metadataAuthority:dc.contributor.author:authority
• More existing configuration properties are available but their values are independent of this feature and their default values are usually fine: choices.closed , authority.required, authority.minconfidence .

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Changes to the configuration always require a server restart before they're in effect.

Adding additional fields under ORCID

Other metadata fields besides "dc.contributor.author" can benefit from the ORCID authority control at the same time. Here is an example of how to get the same ORCID functionality for the "dc.contributor.editor" metadata field assuming that "dc.contributor.author" is already configured correctly. It can be achieved by modifying configuration files only.

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With this last change everything is set up to work correctly. The rest of this configuration file is meant for JAVA developers that wish to provide integration with other systems beside ORCID. Developers that wish to display other fields than first and last name can also have a look in that section.

Note: Each metadata field has a separate set of authority records. Authority keys are not shared between different metadata fields. E. g. multiple dc.contributor.author can have the same authority key and point to the same authority record in the cache. But when an ORCID is chosen for a dc.contributor.editor field, a separate record is made in the cache. Both records are updated from the same source and will contain the same information. The difference is that when performing a look-up of a person that has been introduced as an authority for an author field but not yet as an editor, it will show as record that is not yet present in the repository cache.

Integration with other systems beside ORCID

The authority cache and look-up functionality can be extended to use other sources than ORCID or to show more information in the look-up interface. However some JAVA development is necessary for this. Specific instructions can be found in the readme file of the org.dspace.authority package.

FAQ

Which information from ORCID is currently indexed in the authority cache?

Here is a breakdown of the fields stored in the solr cache.

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The fields with data coming directly from ORCID are: first_name, last_name, name_variant, orcid_id, label_researcher_url, label_keyword, label_external_identifier, label_biography, label_country. The field all_labels contains all the values from the other fields starting with "label_".

How can I index additional fields in the authority cache?

There is currently no configuration to control which fields are indexed. The only way to achieve this is to modify the source code.

List of the files at work for this job:
config/spring/api/orcid-authority-services.xml: OrcidSource contains the URL for orcid's REST API.
org.dspace.authority.orcid.Orcid makes the REST call
+ org.dspace.authority.orcid.xml.XMLtoBio converts the received XML to a java object (Bio).
+ org.dspace.authority.orcid.model.Bio
+ org.dspace.authority.orcid.OrcidAuthorityValue#create(org.dspace.authority.orcid.model.Bio) inserts all the values from Bio into the AuthorityValue subclass.
+ org.dspace.authority.orcid.OrcidAuthorityValue#getSolrInputDocument defines what's included in solr.

The files preceded with a '+' would be necessary to modify to add more info into the cache.

How can I use the information stored in the authority cache?

The look-up UI is currently the only place this information is sent to. However just a limited number of fields are sent. The place in the source code to modify to get more fields there is org.dspace.authority.orcid.OrcidAuthorityValue#choiceSelectMap. This is also documented in the readme of the org.dspace.authority package.

How to add additional metadata fields in the authority cache that are not related to ORCID?

Make the same configuration step as for adding additional fields under ORCID. Currently the ORCID suggestions cannot be turned off for specific fields, that would require custom code.

What happens to data if another authority control was already present?

As long as the metadata does not get indexed, there will be no changes. However every time any metadata of an item is modified, the metadata under authority control for that item will be re-indexed. When that happens a record will be inserted in the solr cache. That record's ID will be the authority key of the metadata. This can be done for all metadata at once with the index-authority script.

In short: authority keys that exist prior to enabling the solrauthority are kept. They just won't show in the look-up until they are indexed.

Where can I find the URL that is used to lookup ORCIDs?

It is found in the config/spring/api/orcid-authority-services.xml configuration file. Look for the <bean name="OrcidSource">, which is initialized with a URL of http://pub.orcid.org