Today I'm going to talk about the Research Organization Registry, also known as ROAR, like the sound that the lion makes, and I'll be talking about ROAR and its work to provide open, persistent identifiers for affiliations. So in my talk today I will explain what

ROAR is, I will talk about what ROAR does and how you can use ROAR and get involved in this initiative. So let's start with the question, what is ROAR? ROAR is a global registry of open, persistent identifiers for research organizations. I'm showing here on the screen

an example of the ROAR ID and metadata record for the State Scientific and Technical Library of Ukraine. If anyone is interested at any point, you can go to roar.org slash search and see the kinds of records that we have in the registry.

The registry right now includes unique identifiers and metadata for about 103,000 organizations around the world. I'm proud to say that this includes 460 records in the registry for organizations that are based in Ukraine.

And I would also like to acknowledge that I'm showing examples today of the records that we have for these Ukrainian organizations. I understand that given the current situation and the current crisis that many organizations are going through unfortunate changes and talk a little bit later on about our work to ensure that

we keep the registry data accurate and up to date and how we work with community stakeholders to do that. So we have 103,000 IDs and metadata records in the registry right now. And in addition to the ROAR ID, the metadata that we have includes names in different languages.

So every organization can have different names in different languages and different versions of the name. We also capture relationships between organizations and we include crosswalks to other identifiers to support interoperability.

So you might be wondering about the scope of ROAR and what is included in the registry. And so I would just like to explain what we mean by research organization. And that is really any organization that is involved in research in some way. In many cases, that means organizations that are producing research, but it also includes organizations that are supporting or sponsoring research,

organizations that facilitate or support research in some way, and organizations that are publishing research and also employing researchers. So we have a pretty expansive definition of what it means to be a research organization.

But the other important thing to mention about the scope and focus of ROAR is that we are really focused on identifying what we call a top level affiliation. And so that is that is the standalone independent organizational affiliation that researchers might use when they're publishing an article.

Because what ROAR is really focused on is being able to identify the research organizations or institutions that are involved in research and to be able to connect them to research outputs and to researchers. So our scope is on research organizations and on identifying what we call those top level affiliations.

Now, one of ROAR's main goals is to be a truly open and global registry that anyone can access and use. And so all of the registry data is available under a CC0 waiver, which means that there are absolutely no restrictions on usage. We also want to make sure that the registry data is usable and accessible by both humans and

machines. So therefore, we make the registry data available in multiple ways. And that includes the search interface, which I linked to earlier and which I'm showing on the slides. We also have the data available via a REST API, and we make it available as a public data file or data dump that anyone can download from Zenodo.

And we update the registry on a rolling basis. And right now we are publishing new registry updates approximately once a month. All of the additions and changes to the registry are coordinated through an open curation process that is based on community feedback.

And I'm showing on this slide a screenshot of the public GitHub repository that we use to triage community feedback and then process those changes to be incorporated into ROAR. Lastly, I want to underscore that not only is ROAR's openness one of its key values, but also the fact that it is community driven.

So ROAR is operated as a collaborative initiative by three organizations, California Digital Library, Crossref, and DataSite. And we do this in conjunction with a broad network of community stakeholders and advisors.

So just to recap this section on what is ROAR. ROAR is an open registry of persistent identifiers for research organizations. ROAR is focused on capturing top level affiliations for research outputs and ROAR is operated as a community driven initiative.

So now I'd like to talk a little bit about what ROAR does. So as I explained earlier, the main function that that ROAR provides is to offer a unique and persistent ROAR ID for a research organization. And that's important because we know that many organizations might have the same name or similar names and it's important to be able to disambiguate them.

So that when we are trying to identify research outputs associated with a specific institution, we can get clean and accurate data. So one of the key functions that the ROAR ID does is to be able to differentiate and disambiguate between institutions with similar names.

And in a similar vein, what's also useful and important about a ROAR ID is that the ID is persistent. It stays the same, even if an organization name changes over time. This is actually one of the most frequent things that we are doing with the registry curation right now, is that many organizations are changing their names or updating their names

quite frequently. And so we want to make sure that the registry data is accurate and up to date. So we make sure that those changes are incorporated into ROAR. But as we make those changes to the metadata in ROAR, the ROAR ID always changes. And so it's very important that the ROAR ID is referenced so that we can consistently

find information about that institution, even if the organization name has changed. So I would like to talk now about how ROAR is more than an identifier. So, of course, the key purpose of the registry is to provide these unique identifiers.

But the real value and power of ROAR is how it can be integrated into research workflows and research infrastructure. And we've seen in the prior presentations today, some examples of PID graphs and knowledge graphs and all of that really depends on having open and usable and interoperable identifiers and metadata to be able to make these connections.

So in the example of ROAR and how ROAR can fit into that, one simple way to explain this is to talk about the research publishing process and how ROAR fits in.

So, for example, a researcher submitting to a journal publishing system or to a data repository, for instance, might be asked to enter information about their affiliation. And so if the system that they are using is integrated with the ROAR registry, then the researcher can select their affiliation name from a controlled list of options based on ROAR.

And then the ROAR identifier for that affiliation can be stored in the system and then included in the metadata that is registered for that researcher's research output. So, for example, in the DOI metadata. And so what that means is that if the ROAR ID is then included in that DOI metadata,

then that can flow downstream to services and systems that are harvesting or relying on DOI metadata to be able to track publications and to be able to easily identify all of the publications that are associated with that ROAR ID.

So just to give you a more detailed example of what that looks like, here is a screenshot of a system that is integrated with ROAR. A researcher is submitting their information and they are asked to provide an affiliation. They're presented with a list of potential options based on what they type and they can choose one.

All of these options are coming from ROAR's controlled list of affiliation names. And then once the affiliation is selected, the identifier can be stored in the background in the database. And so it's invisible to the researcher. The researcher doesn't have to know what their ROAR ID is.

All they have to do is select their affiliation, but the clean piece of metadata can be collected in the background to flow into the next part of the process. So then that ROAR ID that has been selected can be included in the DOI metadata for the research output.

So ROAR is supported in DOI metadata in cross ref and in data site. ROAR is also supported as an affiliation identifier in ORCID as Plomo was explaining before. And so when we have ROAR IDs that are embedded in these other components of the research ecosystem and research infrastructure,

then we can really begin to make connections between them and develop the kinds of knowledge graphs and PID graphs that others have been talking about today to really understand which organizations are associated with which research outputs and to be able to connect those to the funders that are supporting those research projects,

to the grants that were awarded by those funders, to the data sets that are associated with the papers. And so all of these connections and insights are really powered by open, persistent identifiers. So just to recap some of the things that ROAR does, ROAR provides an open solution for disambiguating institutional names.

ROAR functions as an open, persistent identifier that is really designed to work with other open, persistent identifiers. And ROAR really provides foundational open infrastructure for identifying research institutions and connecting them to research outputs.

So I would just like to close with a few ways in which you can get started using ROAR and working with ROAR and get more involved if you wish to do so. So one way in which you can start using ROAR in a more dedicated way is to integrate ROAR in your systems,

or if you are not operating your own system, to ask your vendors and service providers to integrate with ROAR. Another way in which you can get involved in ROAR is to help with curation. We have a public feedback form that is linked on the ROAR website, and I'll share those links at the end, where anyone can suggest changes or additions to the registry.

It's very important that the registry data is accurate and up to date, and so we are constantly receiving community feedback about how to maintain our data. And then lastly, you can join the community if you are interested in participating in community meetings

and contributing feedback about registry development and future directions. We have regular community meetings every other month, and we have a few different working groups that people are welcome to join to get more involved in specific projects. So my last slide has a list of resources and links, and I expect that these slides will be shared with attendees

so that you can consult these resources and learn more about ROAR and get involved if you wish to do so. So thank you very much. I appreciate everyone's time and attention, and thank you again to the organizers for putting on this event and inviting me to speak.