Welcome to Ringgold’s Summer Bulletin. The summer heat has not distracted Ringgold from enhancing our data, services or welcoming new customers. Upgrades to our technical infrastructure are bringing many benefits.
We have launched a new RESTful API Service for straightforward integration of the Identify data into our client’s systems. We are working behind the scenes on new interfaces for our production environment and, taking advantage of that work, we have been able to include a new interface for Validate at the same time, which will enhance your user experience. As always, we continue to enhance our data and have been working on a specific project to improve location information to a more granular level. IDO users will already be seeing the new data in the interface and we expect to be enhancing data feed exports shortly.
Our technical enhancements are ongoing and we are working on a number of exciting projects that we believe will really benefit all of our clients. We hope to bring you news of some of these enhancements over the coming months.
Laura Cox, CFO & COO.
New customers
We are delighted to welcome the following new customers:
- AcademicLabs
- Biochemical Society
- Bloomsbury Publishing Digital Resources Division
- Institute of Civil Engineers Publishing (ICE)
Rest API now available for Identify Database
Ringgold has now made a REST API available for the Identify Database; this is in addition to the existing SOAP API. This new lightweight API will allow for easier integration of the Identify Database with internal systems such as CRMs, Association Management Systems, or any other workflow tool where it would be advantageous to assign and transmit Ringgold IDs and authoritative organizational data. Updated documentation for the Identify Database API Services can be found on our Support site: https://support.ringgold.com/category/identify-database/identify-database-api/
License keys for Identify Database API Services may be requested at support@ringgold.com or by contacting your account representative directly.
Enhancing location information in Identify
We are pleased to let you know that our work on enhancing the location information in the Identify Database in order to make it more granular is nearly complete. Users of Identify Online will already see the enhanced location information when they use the interface and API users will be able to call this information also.
However, the weekly database exports do not currently include the enhanced location information as this will require a new release of the Identify Database. We expect the new release to be available within the next couple of months and we will be contacting customers with full details of the new release shortly.
Validate Service interface to be upgraded
Ringgold’s Validate Service enables Identify customers to obtain Ringgold IDs quickly for records that are not yet included in the Identify Database. This might be for a new customer account, author or prospect. Ringgold then validates the new Ringgold ID, researches and creates the record and its upward hierarchy within 24 hours.
We are currently upgrading the Validate user interface and this will be available towards the end of July. We will be contacting users with full details when the new interface is live. If you would like more information about the new interface or are interested in learning more about Validate then please contact info@ringgold.com
GDPR & Marketing communication preferences
On 30 April 2018, we updated the Privacy Policy for all Ringgold services as part of our continued commitment to data protection, transparency, and to ensure that you always have control over your data. We encourage you to take a look at our Privacy Policy here: https://www.ringgold.com/privacy/
And we thank all those who submitted their marketing communication preferences. If you have not yet told us about your communication preferences please take a moment to do so here.
Ringgold Webinars for 2018
We held two informative webinars for our customers and contacts in May 2018:
- 500,000 Organizations & Counting: What We’ve Learned
- Bringing it All Together: Uniting Data Sources to Reach Your Goals
To watch recordings of these webinars or to download the slide sets, click here: Ringgold Webinars
Essential insights: expert presentations at SSP 2018
Don’t worry if you missed recent valuable opportunities to catch Ringgold staff sharing their expertise at this year’s SSP meeting; you can click here to watch the recordings.
At the SSP Annual Meeting in Chicago in May, Christine Orr chaired Session 1D The Gift that Keeps on Giving: Metadata & Persistent Identifiers Through the Research & Publication Cycle.
And Beth Hoskins spoke at Session 2E Expanding Your CRM To Your Entire Business. The panel, which also included NEJM and Digital Science, focused on how to take advantage of your CRM and make it a powerful hub of your organization.
Organization changes in Identify
So far in 2018 our team has added over 8,000 new records to the Identify Database and updated around 38,000 existing records. This has included the merger of Ringgold IDs 27063 Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris 4) and ID 27068 Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6) to form the new Sorbonne Université. We reviewed all 237 related records in the new hierarchy.
More university merger news. Université Lille 1, Université Lille 2, and Université Lille 3 have been merged into a single record: Ringgold ID 27023 Université de Lille. 144 related records in the database were updated. And in Netherlands, Stenden University of Applied Sciences and NHL Hogeschool merged to create Ringgold ID 84808 NHL Stenden Hogeschool.
In Norway, Ringgold ID 60499 Høgskolen i Oslo og Akershus changed its name to OsloMet – storbyuniversitetet. And Ringgold ID 38987 Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg changed its name to Technische Universität Hamburg. All associated records inIdentify have been updated to reflect these changes. We have also been busy reviewing the complete hierarchies for:
- Ringgold ID 1466 Johns Hopkins University, 171 records
- Ringgold ID 12226 University of Colorado Denver, 68 records
- Ringgold ID 28133 Universidade de Sao Paulo, 111 records
- Ringgold ID 4922 British Broadcasting Corp
Consortium Directory Online update
We are delighted to welcome a new CDO Editor, new staff member Alex Lewis. He replaces Moritz Schick, who is now Ringgold’s Quality Control Manager.
The recent introduction of GDPR has made it necessary for us to review all CDO records where the consortium is based in the European Union and European Economic Area, and remove the personal details of key contacts. However, we now instead provide a direct link to the contact sections of consortia websites. For CDO records outside Europe we continue to provide personal contact details.
We are continuously reviewing records in CDO to ensure that our data is up to date. Recent reviews covered key consortia such as Ringgold ID 442251 e-ShodhSindhu, Ringgold ID 61754 CAPES, and Ringgold ID 47699 DRAA. We have also added a new consortium record to CDO, Ringgold ID 520202 South Dakota Share-It (USA). More information about CDO can be found on our website.
Customer Support
Our Customer Support website is available 24/7 at https://support.ringgold.com. Find detailed help and user guides for all of our products and services.