As researchers, we work toward various goals, such as improving patient care, curing diseases, advancing technology, exploring nature, and developing theories and ideas to make sense of our world. In these efforts, it is important that researchers receive recognition for their work and control their professional information.
However, controlling your identity and information is not always easy. Perhaps you have a common name, your name has changed after marriage, or your name is displayed differently across various publications, websites, and other systems.
The ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor) iD has been developed as a solution to these problems. Similar to how DOI (digital object identifier) provides a unique, persistent identifier for publications, ORCID iD does the same for researchers. Your ORCID iD makes it easy to let people know who you are.
In this article, we answer 5 common questions about ORCID iD and how it can help you in your research.
An ORCID iD is a unique, persistent identifier that makes it easier to link your identity and publications, ensuring that you are credited properly for your work (including peer reviews you complete). Over the last decade, adoption of ORCID by publishers, funding organizations, and research organizations has become widespread. Chances are, if you are looking to publish, your target journal will allow you to associate your ORCID iD with your manuscript—if it doesn’t outright require you to do so.
After you’ve created an ORCID iD, your record will function as a catalogue of all of your publications, professional biography, professional network and social links, and more. For an example of how your ORCID record might represent you, see https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097.
Many journals request (but do not require) that authors provide their ORCID iD on manuscript files or within the online submission system. In recent years, however, the number of journals that outright require an ORCID iD has increased. Often journals and publishers require an ORCID iD for only the corresponding author, but some, such as JMIR Publications and ScienceOpen, require an ORCID iD for all named authors.
Today, over 7,000 journals are already collecting ORCID iDs from corresponding authors, up from over 1,500 in 2017. And this number is only going to increase. At the end of 2015, the ORCID website published an open letter where publishers can pledge their commitment to requiring ORCID iDs for authors. Within a year, 25 publishers and scholarly associations had signed this letter, 16 of whom had already implemented this requirement by the end of 2016. Now, over 90 publishers and journals have signed, including some of the largest in the industry, such as PLOS, Springer Nature, Wiley, and SAGE Publications. This list is being updated all the time (with new signatories as recently as August, 2020). You can view the full list of signatories here.
Publishers aren’t the only organizations that have started to implement ORCID. In fact, many funders now recommend or require the use of ORCID iDs in their grant application systems. A list of funders that have issued a policy or statement related to ORCID requirements can be found on the ORCID website.
There is strong support for the adoption of ORCID iDs by publishers and other professional societies within the academic community. A 2015 survey reported as high as 72% of respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing that ORCID requirements would be beneficial for the research community (compared with 21% neutral responses and only 7% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing).
Simply follow this link and complete the form there. Remember the username and password that you set because you will need them to manage your ORCID profile (e.g., to update your information or to manage your visibility settings) and also to link your ORCID iD within some online submission systems.
You’ll most often associate your iD with your manuscript during the submission process. For example, ScholarOne, a popular online submission platform used by many journals, requires authors to actually log into ORCID from within the system itself, securely linking their ORCID iD with their ScholarOne account.
Some journals will request that authors also list ORCID iDs on the title page of the manuscript file. For example, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), Seventh Edition requests that authors list ORCID iDs in a footnote on the title page, including the iD icon (
) followed by a hyperlink to the ORCID record.
The ORCID site itself strongly encourages the use of the iD icon and provides guidelines for displaying it on the manuscript. There are three ways to do this.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097 While many journals will allow you to add ORCID iDs to your manuscript at any time during revision or even at acceptance, be aware that some journals allow them only at initial submission. For example, the Instructions for Authors of PNAS state the following (emphasis ours):
"Author Affiliation: Include department, institution, and complete address, with the ZIP/postal code, for each author. Use superscripts to match authors with institutions. Multiple affiliations are allowed. Authors are strongly encouraged to supply their ORCID. For proper authentication, authors must provide their ORCIDs at submission and are not permitted to add ORCIDs on proofs."
ORCID iD has grown from 50,000 users in 2012 to more than 9.7 million today, and it is becoming an essential part of the research and scholarly publication. We hope that the information in this article will be helpful, especially for researchers who are new to ORCID iD.
If you have any questions about ORCID or any other part of the research and publication process, we are here to help.
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