Proposal for significant ROR data model changes

Content Registration
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:lion: :lion: :lion:

As 2022 comes to a close, ROR has one last request for feedback. You’ll almost certainly want to chime in on this one: our draft proposal of major changes to the ROR data model for schema version 2.0. Comments are open until February 5, 2023 February 12, 2023 and we hope to release version 2.0 of the ROR schema and API in late 2023.

There are four major categories of alteration we’re proposing for ROR schema 2.0:

  • Standardizing, clarifying, and reorganizing name fields (name, aliases, labels)
  • Removing repetitive, excessively granular location information retrieved from the GeoNames API (sub-fields in addresses)
  • Rethinking web domain information (email_address, ip_addresses, links)
  • Restructuring external identifiers to allow future addition or removal of identifier types without schema changes (sub-fields in external_ids)
  • Adding administrative information such as created and last modified dates

Many of these are breaking changes, but we think it’s better to do a lot of them all at once so that future changes to the schema can be made with minimal disruption to existing ROR integrations. Read more in our blog post “Schema Scheming: Evolving the ROR Data Model.”

Let us know what you think by commenting in the proposal Google Doc (so that the conversation all happens in one place) or emailing support@ror.org before February 5th, 2023 February 12, 2023.

:lion: :lion: :lion:

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I have a doubt. Some Brazilian institutions appear with the main name in another language, such as English instead of Portuguese. In other names is the official name in the language of the institution, Portuguese, but I think that in other names the options in English should be.
Example: Research Organization Registry (ROR) Search

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Thanks for your comment, @marcelareinhardt! It is true that most of the main names in ROR are in English, because the data ROR inherited from GRID had them that way, but we are usually happy to change the name in the name field to the primary language of the organization’s country. You can submit a request to change “Federal University of Paraíba” to “Universidade Federal da Paraíba” using the curation request form linked to from every record.

If you’d like to request that multiple Portuguese institutions have their main name in English, you can email registry@ror.org and we can begin such a project.

In terms of the proposed ROR schema changes, one key suggestion we’re making is to add a language code to the name field so that we know what language the name is. The labels field (which is where we store the name of the organizations in other languages) does have language codes, but we need them in the name field as well precisely so that we can analyze the registry for issues like this. Right now we don’t have any reliable way of telling how many records in the ROR registry have the main name in English.

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Thank you so much for the reply @amandafrench !
I will send suggestions.
It seems really important to include the language code field. Update success!

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Hi all! We’ve extended the deadline to comment on our proposal for major changes to the ROR metadata schema by a week in order to allow time to respond for those who first heard about it at the ROR annual meeting last week. Take a look at the proposals for changes to name fields , location fields , domain fields, and external identifier fields and comment by February 12, 2023 (aka this Sunday).

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