About the Intembeko ORCID Hub
The Intembeko ORCID Hub is based on software developed and extensive work done by the lead organisation for the New Zealand ORCID Consortium, The Royal Society Te Apārangi. New Zealand's ORCID Hub was developed as an answer to the question, "How can we help research organisations of all sizes respond to the ORCID Joint Statement of Principle that New Zealand adopts ORCID as the national researcher identifier?"
South Africa faces similar challenges. Our research institutions vary in size and in the availability of technical resources to implement ORCID integrations. Recognising this, TENET — the lead organisation of the South African ORCID Consortium — investigated and found that an adaptation of the NZ ORCID Hub would be a good fit for the South African research community.
The Intembeko ORCID Hub's core function is to provide all South African ORCID Consortium members with the ability to make authoritative assertions concerning their relationship with researchers on the researcher's ORCID record, irrespective of their size or technical resources.
The Hub supports a self-service assertion based on information learnt from the South African Identity Federation (SAFIRE)
To use the Intembeko ORCID hub in this mode, organisations will need to participate in the South African Identity Federation (SAFIRE). The reason for this is simple: when you select your institution from the available list, the information shared as part of the login process can be used to write a minimal affiliation of organisation, city, country and employment/education. The benefit of this is that the affiliation is written directly though researcher interaction, with anyone able to initiate this process simply by logging in at their home institution. This process is also very secure as the user's email address and principle name are authenticated as part of the exchange.
It is also possible to log into the Hub using an ORCID ID, but only once your affiliation has been asserted.
What does the name "Intembeko" mean
South Africa is a diverse country with many different cultures and eleven official languages. The word "Intembeko" is drawn from isiXhosa, a language spoken by approximately 8 million South Africans as a first or home language and understood by at least 11 million second language speakers. Translated into English Intembeko means "trust" and symbolises the intention of the Hub act as a trusted source of information for ORCID records.
The logo and it's design
ORCID's vision has always been to put the researcher in control of their ORCID record. As the Hub was also designed around this vision the logo represents elements of this. The inner circle mimics both the user's ORCID record as well as the ORCID logo itself. The rectangles highlight the contributions in an ORCID record. The outer circle mirrors ripples and shows a wave of contributions pushed into the reseach community. The red arrows pointing in highlight empowers and provides the nessasary infrastructure and services to make research possible.
ORCID Service Provider Certification
The Intembeko ORCID Hub has been awarded the ORCID Certfied Service Provider Badge, which can be found on the Hub's homepage. This means that the Hub has passed a set of strict criteria for Service providers to adhere to when they integrate with ORCID. More information on this can be found on ORCID's blog
Contact Details
The Intembeko ORCID Hub is operated by TENET on behalf of universities and research organisations in South Africa.
SA ORCID Consortium ℅ TENET NPCWeb: https://www.tenet.ac.za/services/orcid
Phone: +27 21 763 7147
Email: orcid@tenet.ac.za