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Cividens Cooperative
Our mission, our governance, and why identity verification matters for research.
Our Cooperative & Governance
Cividens was founded by and for researchers to fix a problem researchers know well: clunky identity verification, scattered across too many systems, asking for too much personal data. Research integrity depends on attribution and accountability — so we built identity verification as a cooperative, owned and governed by the people who use it.
What is a co-op?
Cividens is a worker cooperative that provides one specific service: identity verification for researchers. Cooperatives are owned and democratically controlled by the people who use them, not outside investors — each member gets one vote, surplus is returned to members, and the seven ICA cooperative principles guide how we operate.
Who's involved
Researchers — Create a free account. No fee.
Researcher Members — Verify identity with official documents. $20/year. Vote in governance.
Subscribers — Request verified identity data from Members via the Cividens API.
Sponsors — Support adoption through vouchers, patient capital, or grants.
Governing documents
Code of Conduct — How we treat each other and our community: listen first, act with judgment and courtesy.
Articles of Incorporation — Filed under the Colorado Uniform Limited Cooperative Association Act, May 2025.
Bylaws — Governance structure, membership classes, and patronage rules; open for member comment.
Membership Agreement — Buy-in, annual fees, activity requirements, and governance access.
Board Policies — Fiduciary duties, conflict of interest, whistleblower protections, and code of ethics.
Membership is open to any researcher — using the OECD's definition, that's over 100 million people worldwide engaged in creating new knowledge. Members elect the board and shape the decisions that steer the cooperative.
Mission, Values & Team
To support researcher agency, advance human accountability, and unlock essential resources in the digital world for researchers & scholars.
Our values
Joyful Authenticity — Honest, human, genuinely invested. Verification should feel like empowerment, not surveillance.
Mindful Curiosity — We ask hard questions, listen carefully, and stay open to what we don't yet know.
Radical Collaboration — We build with our community, not for them. Governance is shared and transparent.
Decisive Action — We don't wait for perfect conditions. We assess risk, move with intention, and iterate.
Our team
Laura Paglione, MBA
Co-Founder
Founding Technical Director of ORCID, scaling the platform to 5M+ users. MBA, MIT Sloan School of Management.
Laure Haak, PhD
Co-Founder
Founding CEO of ORCID, leading it from startup to global adoption. PhD in Neurosciences, Stanford University.
Chris Phillips, CIDPRO
Co-Founder
20+ years in identity and access management. Founding technical architect of CANARIE's national research identity federation.
"Diversity and inclusion in identity system design is widely acknowledged as being essential for fair access to basic services." — Dr. Sarah Walton, Women in Identity Code of Conduct
Why Verification Matters
Verification isn't about control — it's about confidence, fairness, and connection. Cividens provides a common, researcher-driven solution that protects integrity while simplifying participation.
The evolving research landscape
Trust has always been the foundation of research. It used to be you built trust in person. Today, building trust requires online identity verification.
Global collaboration: Projects span continents and disciplines. Without shared verification, access barriers multiply.
AI-assisted authorship: Confirming who contributed to research outputs is vital for accountability and attribution.
Data and compliance: Funders and repositories increasingly require identity checks to meet ethical and security standards.
Fraud prevention: Journals and institutions face rising impersonation and fake reviewer incidents.
What are researchers saying?
Initial results from our global survey of researchers on privacy and identity show that over 80% have been asked to prove their identity to access research tools, data, funding, authorship, or facilities — though the checks requested are often just email or affiliation-based, which are weak trust builders. Over 90% said the privacy of their personal information, and their say in how it's collected and shared, was very important or critical.
Building trust through identity
For research to be meaningful we need more than experiments and data — we need pathways to build trust.
Accountability — that the people engaged in a project own the research process and findings described and shared.
Confidence — that collaboration networks, local through international, are empowered through participation by people with a range of backgrounds and perspectives.
Transparency — in the credentials a researcher presents to gain access to research tools, data, and funding.
"Rather than managing over 100 passwords, people will bring their identities with them and exercise greater control over data about them." — GAIN Digital Trust Report, 2021
Cividens is built to support trust
Cividens Cooperative is a global digital identity and personhood verification service researchers can rely on for trusted interactions with research facilities, data, funders, publishers, and resources — without exposing personal data. We seek to give individuals control over their personal information, while balancing governance of the service across all stakeholders: the researchers using it, the workers building it, and the organizations integrating it.
Further reading
Haak LL, Skinner K, & Ratan K (2025) Engineering Open by Design into Research Infrastructures. Research Ideas and Outcomes 11: e163817.
Ayun DE, Haak LL, & Ginther DK (2023) How many people in the world do research and development? Global Policy 14(2) 270-287.
Flanagan H, Haak LL, & Paglione LD (2021) Approaching Trust: Case Studies for Developing Global Research Infrastructures. Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics 6.
Haak L, Greene S, & Ratan K (2020) A New Research Economy. Research Ideas and Outcomes 6: e60477.
Haak LL, Fenner M, Paglione L, Pentz E, & Ratner H (2012) ORCID: a system to uniquely identify researchers. Learned Publishing 25(4): 259-264.