What (and Who) Is the ROR Community?

The Research Organization Registry is a cross-organizational and multi-stakeholder initiative. ROR is run by a small group of steering organizations in collaboration with a broad network of community advisors and supporters.

This approach to operating ROR means that it does not fit neatly into existing notions of organizations in the scholarly communications and open infrastructure space:

• ROR is not an organization (fun fact: this means that ROR does not have its own ROR ID!)
• ROR does not belong to any one organization
• ROR is not structured around a membership model

Anyone can access and use ROR data and anyone is welcome to get involved in ROR meetings and working groups.

Especially as ROR is still relatively new, keeping things relatively lightweight and nimble means that ROR can be flexible and responsive as the community continues to grow and evolve around it. Involving community stakeholders in all aspects of ROR’s activities is central to the vision of ROR as a community-led project.

This blog post highlights three key aspects of ROR’s community focus:

• ROR is a collaborative, global, multi-stakeholder community
• There are a number of ways to get involved in ROR
• It is important to have mechanisms for “taking the temperature” of the ROR community. So we are collecting data and input in the first-ever ROR Community Survey, which we hope to run on a regular basis going forward.

Who runs ROR?

CDL, Crossref, and DataCite are the operational team leading ROR. They are the governing organizations that share the overall responsibility for coordinating ROR activities and making decisions that support the growth and sustainability of ROR. These three organizations also contribute in-kind resources in the form of dedicated and ad hoc personnel for the ROR project team, which works on product development, outreach, and adoption, as well as infrastructural resources such as server hosting.

The ROR Steering Group consists of representatives of additional organizations, including Digital Science, which provided the seed data from GRID that was used to launch ROR. This group provides input on decisions and overall strategy, and support for ROR’s growth and sustainability through outreach to funders, potential adopters, and other stakeholders in their respective networks.

Who is the ROR Community?

The ROR Community Advisory Group is a voluntary group of about fifty users and stakeholders interested in adopting and championing ROR in their work and networks. Members participate in regular meetings to discuss project updates and provide feedback.

Group members are located around the world, reinforcing ROR’s global reach. It would be great to see even greater coverage in the future.

Group members also represent a range of organizations, reinforcing the range of stakeholders with an interest in ROR.

ROR also coordinates smaller working groups in specific domains, one focused on publisher adoption and the other focused on curation. Some members of these groups also participate in the activities of the broader advisory group.

ROR Supporters are community members who have invested financially in ROR and/or signed on to a public statement of support for ROR.

How to get involved in ROR

Get in touch with ROR via info@ror.org if you would like to join the Community Advisory Group and/or get involved in ROR adoption or curation.

You can also support ROR and raise awareness about the project by integrating ROR in your system, or asking service providers to integrate ROR. There are also some community efforts outside of ROR, such as a project to build a ROR plugin in OJS. If you are active in the Wiki community, you could get involved in working with ROR in Wikidata, or perhaps you’d like to suggest a new Wikipedia page for ROR?

Take the ROR Community Survey!

As ROR grows and as the community grows around it, it will be increasingly important to have a good sense for who is working with ROR and what needs and interests are out there. We are collecting this data and input in the first-ever ROR Community Survey, which we hope to run on a regular basis going forward. Take the survey now!