The UT Libraries has ceased support for the SelectedWorks Author Gallery, which is a module within Trace, the university’s open repository. The Libraries no longer creates nor updates author pages. Librarians recommend that authors register for a free ORCID identifier and publishing profile.

Workshops on ORCID and how ORCID and Trace complement each other will be held in the Libraries. All researchers are welcome to attend one of these sessions:

Register for one of the ORCID workshops using our online form.

For several years, UT researchers have had the opportunity to list their publications online as part of the SelectedWorks Author Gallery. SelectedWorks (SW) is a complementary interface within Trace (Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange), which is the university’s open repository created and maintained by the Libraries. Because Trace remains central to the university’s outreach efforts and to the Libraries’ mission of collecting and archiving research, librarians are directing increased energy to Trace improvements. As part of this prioritization, the Libraries are ceasing support for SW in January 2016.

Trace will continue to be the institutional repository where researchers can deposit their work for public access with proper permissions. And librarians are available to assist researchers in reviewing publishing agreements and funder policies so that publications and data sets can be publicly shared in keeping with copyright agreements.

But for researchers who use SW or are looking for a website to list their publications or host their profile, UT librarians recommend ORCID, or Open Researcher Contributor ID, as a more robust, open, and beneficial way to list publications than SW. ORCID’s raison d’etre is to assign researchers unique author identifiers – authors are numbers, not names – so that research workflows, from presenting to publishing to awarding grants, will be more efficient with reduced name ambiguity. Researchers who register for a free ORCID identifier (ORCID iD) automatically have an ORCID profile page on which to list publications and other research contributions.

In the past few weeks, announcements from several publishers as well as research funders have reinforced the significance of these iDs. As of today, eight publishers now require authors to have an ORCID iD in order to publish, and this list will grow in the coming months. (ORCID recently posted an open letter from publishers requiring ORCID iDs.) Furthermore, ORCID’s Laure Haak recently highlighted how ORCID works across systems, which is one reason why many publishers, funders, and universities are members of ORCID: “The recent launch of Crossref’s auto-update functionality means that researchers can opt to have their ORCID record automatically updated when their papers are published, which in turn means that university and other systems can receive updates directly and reduce reporting burden on researchers.”

Additional information on the SelectedWorks transition is located here, and liaison librarians are in the process of contacting their departments with more information about these changes. For questions on SelectedWorks, Trace, or ORCID, please contact the Scholarly Communication Librarian, Rachel Radom (rradom@utk.edu, 974-6107).