Laura Cox on institutional identifiers internally and throughout the supply chain

Laura Cox: do a data health check

Laura Cox, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at Ringgold kicked off her talk with a focus on what constitutes healthy data. Good quality, reliable and consistent data helps make good decisions. You gain insight into customers and business relationships as well as support strategic planning, decision making and ongoing business operations.

Poor data has real consequences. It is hard to get a true picture of relationships with institutions, can lead to a lack of quality author (and affiliation) data and an inability to see overlap between authors, members and customers. It can drive inaccurate holdings and revenue reports leading to protracted time and effort which can cost your business time and money. Healthy records are complete, accurate, free of duplications, current, consistent and conform with standard identifiers. 

What are unique identifiers and how can they help? 

They are numeric or alpha-numeric designations which are associated with a single entity. Entities can be institutions, persons or pieces of content. They enable the disambiguation of each entity and provide a proper understanding of customer, author, reader or institution as well as a proper identification of content object, article, product or package. They can also be used internally or in conjunction with external partners.

Why should we worry about data now? 

Cox cited the 2012 STM Report (Ware, M and Mabe, M. The STM Report, 2012) which stated that the number of researchers and the number of article are both increasing by 3% per annum. The number of journals is increasing by 3.5% per annum and growth in China has been in double digits for over 15 years. At the same time there is increased demand for anytime/anywhere access while library budgets are frozen or being cut, less money for more content.

Institutional Identifiers can be used for disambiguation (e.g. which UCL?), consolidating different versions (many ways of describing the University of Oxford and its institutions). They provide a hierarchy view (institute within an institution) and reinforce uniqueness. This means you can use them for a gap analysis. 

The Kafka-esque 'Identifiers identified' slide

The main challenge is around multiple data sources. There are system data silos, multiple locations - geographic data silos, data entered by different people for different purposes, data from 3^rd parties in the supply chain and data from bought in sources. These things aren’t integrated. Typical publisher systems include financial, CRM or sales databases, authentication system, fulfilment, usage statistics, submissions systems and so on.

Cox advised that the first thing to do is think about your data and implement a data governance plan. What data is held, where and how is it accessed? How can it be used to benefit business and work across silos? But always bear in mind where are you now and where do you want to go?

Another recommendation was to improve data capture. If you can, use web forms as they minimise variance in data input. Implement required fields, use date validation and at a minimum use naming conventions. There are a number of tools such as address validation, postcode look-up, institution validation/lookup. Avoid free-text fields and make institutional identifiers a requirement.

You can use an institutional identifier as a lynch pin to link internal systems for better data integration. It can prevent duplicate account creations, help keep data up-to-date and systems synchronized. It also enables staff to use data more effectively, break down silos, simplify data transmission and provide more insight and power to analyse and understand the business.

So what can you do now?

• Engage with the problems
• Think about resources. Time? Money? Systems?
• How do you want it to work – look at priorities
• Have a data governance policy
• Appoint a data champion and document everything
• Create some basic rules for data entry
• Use universal identifiers to clean and link your data
• Work with suppliers and customers to use institutional identifiers ot strengthen the supply chain.

What do the US Open and ALPSP Annual Conference have in common?

This September will see a hive of scholarly publishers converge on The Belfry, 'the spiritual home of The Ryder Cup', for the ALPSP International Conference. Once again, the ALPSP Ringgold Golf Tournament will take place on the final afternoon.

If you love golf AND scholarly publishing, it seems appropriate to highlight two major events this week: the US Open kicks off today and the ALPSP conference early bird rate ends tomorrow. Make sure you take advantage of both.

Richard Fidczuk from SAGE Publications wrote a summary of last year's tournament:

"The now traditional ALSP Ringgold Golf Tournament took place on the Belfry Derby course after the conference finished, on Thursday afternoon. After worries that the weather would be like Wednesday afternoon, when it was hard to hear the conference speakers as the rain was so heavy on the roof of the hall, Thursday afternoon proved to be a beautifully sunny autumn day. There were thirteen participants in four teams, of all standards – and I do mean all, from handicaps as low as 6 to a clutch of high-handicappers , some of whom had only played golf a handful of times. And truly international, with players from The US, South Africa, and the Netherlands, as well as the UK. The Stableford scoring format, which gives players extra shots depending on their handicap, meant that everyone, regardless of ability, had a chance to score points for their team.

It was a closely fought contest, with two teams tying for first place at the end of the 18 holes, and after a tense count back process to decide the winner, the team comprised of Arend Welmers (Quantum90), Mark Carden (Metapress) and Phil Roberts (IET) came out on top. The individual winner was Chris Fell (CUP), who despite his rather ordinary putting (he won’t mind my saying that – I hope!) scored a total of 33 points to win. All winners received a magnificent trophy which cost, literally, pounds.

Thanks to Laura Cox from Ringgold for sponsoring the event again and providing refreshments at the 19th hole; and for Lesley at ALPSP for organizing with the conference venue. We will of course be playing again this year and will be looking for more participants (of all standards)."

Further information on the conference programme is available on the website.
Book your place at the early bird rate until Friday 14 June.

ASA 2013: Laura Cox on Pulling Together - Information Flow Throughout the Scholarly Supply Chain

Laura Cox with a messy and complex supply chain

Laura Cox, Chief Marketing Officer at Ringgold Inc, talked through the problems of information flow throughout the scholarly supply chain. If only publishers would use the right identifiers with their content, then there is a huge opportunity to improve information, insight and cost efficiencies.

What are the things that go wrong? Records are unconnected through the supply chain. Links fail between entities, between internal systems, and between external systems. Renewals are mishandled. Journal transfers, access and authentication is mishandled. Authors and individuals are not linked to their institution. Open access fees have to be checked manually. Authors are not linked to their research and funders are not linked to the research they fund.

We need to find a path to using standardized data. Identifiers can help. They can provide a proper understanding of customers, whether author, reader or institution. They also provide a simple basis for wider data governance (that is data governance defined as processes, policies, standards, organization, technology required to organize, maintain and access/interpret data) through:

• ongoing data maintenance 
• identifiers enforce uniqueness
• enable ongoing data governance
• ensure systems work
• help with cleansing data for future use.

Cox cited research from Mark Ware and Michael Mabe (The STM Report, 2012) for the wider context:

• Journals are increasing by 3.5% per annum 
• There is an increase in the number of articles by 3% per annum
• The number of researchers is increasing by 3% per annum
• Growth in China is in double digits
• There is increasing demand for any time, any where access
• Library budgets are frozen.

There are a number of identifiers available. For people, there is the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) which can apply to authors, playwrights, artists - any creator - which is a bridge identifier. The Open Research and Contributor ID (ORCID) links research to their authors. It disambiguates names looking at the different manner in which they can be recorded and can help remove problems with name changes. They can embed IDs into research workflows and the supply chain, can link to altmetrics and to integrate systems.

Institutional identifiers include Ringgold and ISNI, which map institutions and link data together. This ensures you can identify institutional customers so you can give correct content, and it disambiguates institutional naming conventions.

If you put institutional and author IDs together you gain genuine market intelligence:

• who's working with whom and where
• impact of research output on a particular institution - the contribution of their faculty
• subscription sales or lack thereof
• where reseach funding is concentrated
• ability to track open access charges (APCs) to fee structure.

Use internal linking in your systems, you can use identifiers to connect:

• customer master file
• financial system
• CRM/sales database
• authentication system
• fulfilment
• usage statistics
• submissions system
• author information.

This enables you to access information from multiple systems in one place, reducing time and cost in locating information, and enabling you to use information to make decisions and inform strategy.

A nice and tidy supply chain

External linking using identifiers will enable you to:

• ensure accuracy of information
• speed up data transactions
• reduce queries
• reduce costs
• open data up to new uses
• provide seamless supply chain where data flows from one org to next
• ensures that authors receive credit for the work they produce
• provide a good service to the community.

We need a forum to discuss and pull together: to engage with the problems in data transfer, generate an industry wide policy on using identifiers, break down the data silo mentality, and use universal identifiers to enable our systems to communicate with each other accurately on an ongoing basis. This will help serve the author and reader more effectively and strengthen the links in the supply chain.