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Are there organizations/groups that can be used to verify that someone is a researcher, that we could use here on Bluesky/the AT Protocol? 🧪☄️ I know ORCiD exists, but I think anyone can make one, which doesn't make it 100% reliable? (Unless it turns out that their moderation is strong)

I have an ORCiD and I'm not a researcher, so yeah, the signal is v weak on its own. They have trust-layer services but nothing definitive.

From my time at Morressier, the honest finding was that "is/is not a researcher" is genuinely hard to answer with useful certainty. The safer approach is being transparent with audiences about what level of verification exists, rather than pretending any single signal is conclusive.

A few things that stack well together: ORCiD + profile interrogability: showing that a profile has linked ORCiD records, with publications from trusted publishers, that people can inspect, is much more useful than just "has ORCID". @sifa.id could be good for this.

Caveat: researchers in many global regions don't always get institutional email addresses, or just use Gmail. So Ringgold alone can exclude real researchers too.

No single service has complete data or total assurance. Multiple data points + transparency to relevant audiences is the approach that actually builds trust, especially since we know bad-faith authors and publishers exist, and letting audiences interrogate that is healthier than false confidence.