ORCID Logo image c/o the Wikimedia Commons
What Is an ORCID? https://orcid.org/
An ORCID is a unique 16 digit ID for researchers, academics, and scholars. The ability to set up an ORCID personal account is that it allows you to attach a specific digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other scholar, and it is free! I encourage most collaborators I research and write with to set up their own account, as this persistent digital ID is often used as an integration tool for a number of journals and grant applications. Plus it’s often used as to sign in to complete some academic conference proceedings and/or to peer review manuscripts for journals. Additionally, other key research protocols integrated into digital portals for scholarly work may also require an ORCID. Additionally, an ORCID account allows you to aggregate other digital professional activities or networks (e.g. ResearcherID, LinkedIn, etc.) and scholarly outputs into one online space to ensure your work is recognized and credited to you!
ORCID around the world from ORCID on Vimeo.
Having an ORCID will help:
- Allows your work to be discoverable by others.
- Provides a means to distinguish between you and other authors with identical or similar names.
- Links together all of your works even if you have used different names over the course of your career.
- Makes it easy for you & others to connect to research outputs (e.g. journal log in, grant funders, etc.)
- Ensures that your work is clearly attributed to you.
- Helps minimize repetitive data entering – when submitting manuscripts for publication or applications for grants – systems using ORCID will help pre-populate your contact details/information.
Where are ORCID in Use?
- By publishers in manuscript submission and data repositories.
- By some professional societies to manage membership, authorship, and conferences.
- By some funding agencies (e.g. NIH or SciENcv) to generate the required bio sketch.
- By some metrics tools, such as Impactstory.org. Add ORCID to you Impact Story profile to import your citation information – and view to see altmetrics displayed for your publications.
- By researcher profile tools (e.g. ResearchGate, Mendeley, etc.).
SET UP YOUR ORCID:
- Start by Registering for an ORCID iD here: https://orcid.org/register
- If you have any questions or issues with this setup, be sure to visit the Create an iD: Website User site: http://support.orcid.org/knowledgebase/articles/171598-create-an-id-website-user
Here is a “how to” Video for ORCID registration c/o the Research Medical Library:
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