Have you got an ORCID yet?

 

If you haven’t, you might want to make it your New Year’s resolution. (Impact Story make a very good case and so do JISC)

Why? 

Have you ever tried to search for an author, only to discover that he shares a name with 113 other researchers? Or realized that Google Scholar stopped tracking citations to your work after you took your spouse’s surname a few years back?

If so, you’ve probably wished for ORCID.

ORCID IDs are permanent identifiers for researchers. Community uptake has increased tenfold over the past year, and continues to be adopted by new institutions, funders, and journals on a daily basis. ORCID may prove to be one of the most important advances in scholarly communication in the past ten years.

ORCIDs protects your unique scholarly identity

As you move institution, perhaps change your name, if you have a relatively common name – you can be sure that all your work is associated with YOU.

ORCIDs are quick to set up

Setting up an ORCID record is easier than setting up a Facebook account, and literally only takes 30 seconds.

Plus, if you’ve published before, you likely already have a ResearcherID orScopus Author ID, or you may have publications indexed in CrossRef–which means that you can easily import information from those systems into your ORCID record, letting those websites do the grunt work for you.

Journals, funders & institutions are moving to ORCID

Some of the world’s largest publishers, funders, and institutions have adopted ORCID.

Over 1000 journals, including publications by PLOS, Nature, and Elsevier, are using ORCID as a way to make it easier for authors to manage their information in manuscript submission systems. ORCID can also collect your publications from across these varied services, making it possible to aggregate author-level metrics.

Funding agencies are integrating their systems with ORCID for similar reasons. Funders from the Wellcome Trust to the NIH now request that grantees use ORCIDs to manage information in their systems, and many other funding agencies across the world are following suit.

In 2013, universities accounted for the largest percentage of all new ORCID members. ORCID helps institutions track your work, compile information foruniversity-level reporting (i.e., total funding received by its scholars), and more efficiently manage information on faculty profiles. By eliminating redundancies and automating some reporting functions, ORCID will be especially helpful in reducing time and monies spent on REF and other assessment activities.

Link your ORCID to your Symplectic account

ORCiD and Symplectic are now integrated such that researchers can create, or connect an existing ORCiD ID directly from their Symplectic profile. Find out more