Create an ORCID iD!
Are you an author who shares a name with someone else? Have you ever Googled yourself and found another scholar with your same name? This doesn’t just happen to John or Jane Doe anymore. Even uncommon first and last names are rarely unique on the web.
Solution: You should create an ORCID iD!
ORCID iDs are persistent identifiers for people. Using an ORCID iD ensures that researchers can be easily and correctly connected with their research activities, outputs, and affiliations. ORCID iDs stay with you regardless of name changes, your institutional affiliation or position.
Over 1.8 million researchers globally have registered for an iD, understanding the value a digital name provides in enhancing discoverability and reducing their reporting paperwork. These ORCID identifiers are associated with more than 4.5 million digital object identifiers (DOIs) for papers and datasets. These connections are searchable both in the ORCID registry and in discovery databases, including Europe PubMed Central, the Modern Language Association (MLA) International Bibliography, Scopus, and Web of Science.
Over 200 research platforms and workflow systems collect and connect iDs from researchers: grant application and publishing systems, association management systems, and other research information systems.
Many publishers include a field for an author’s ORCID iD. Recently, publishers including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (publishers of Science), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), eLife, EMBO, Hindawi, the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Public Library of Science (PLOS) announced that they will join the Royal Society in requiring its authors to include ORCID iDs at submission.
How do you get an iD? It’s easy! Just go to https://orcid.org/register to get started. It only takes a few seconds to create an account. ORCID records hold non-sensitive information such as name, email, organization and research activities, and ORCID also provides tools to manage data privacy.
Want more information?
- Meadows, A. (2016). Everything you ever wanted know about ORCID . . . but were afraid to ask. College & Research Libraries News, 77(1), 23–30. http://crln.acrl.org/content/77/1/23.