Product Update: ORCID iD
Identification… Everybody has a story about their identification, right? Some of you may have lost an ID. Some of you may have used a fake ID. Some of you may even have a great picture of yourself, but most of us don’t (sadly). Either way, IDs are instrumental in uniquely identifying you as an individual through your name, and the academic world is no different. This is where ORCID comes in. Your ORCID iD is the unique 16-digit academic identity that separates you from the dozens of other John Smith’s, de la Souza, De La Souza and Souza.
A few months ago we added the possibility of syncing your ORCID iD with your Researcher profile. When you connect your accounts, you’ll be able to see all of your paper abstracts in your Researcher profile, along with their citation counts. If your paper is on Researcher, you’ll also be able to see how many views it has received.
In this short blog post, we’ll guide you through what ORCID is, why it’s important, and how to sync your ORCID iD with your Researcher profile. Feel free to skip to the bottom if you’re already familiar with ORCID.
What is ORCID?
ORCID is a global nonprofit organisation. It is funded through membership, and its members include publishers, funders, research institutes and associations. It is part of the ‘wider digital infrastructure needed for researchers to share information on a global scale’. They provide ‘an identifier for individuals to use with their name as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities.’ Over 7.5 million researchers currently have an ORCID iD as a means to persistently identify and distinguish their academic work. ORCID can also be used for all forms of publications such as journal articles, books, and book chapters and also applies to other key research activities like applying for a grant, releasing a dataset, or peer-reviewing a paper.
This method of identification is useful when considering how often mistaken identity occurs in academia. Mistaken identity may occur if you have the same or similar name to another researcher, a change in name or when translating your name. With an ORCID iD, you will no longer have to worry about any of these issues as your iD remains with you throughout your academic life. In essence, your ORCID will become a professional profile that features all of your work.
How to create an ORCID iD
All you need to create an ORCID iD is your name and email address. You will then have to create a password. You can create an ORCID iD here: https://orcid.org/register.
After this, there are just a few steps to build a record. This may include institutional verification, automatic publishing update authorisations (like CrossRef) and then you can connect to your existing works, grants other academic profiles like Mendeley or ScopusID. You can find out how to make the most of your ORCID iD in this blog: https://orcid.org/blog/2017/08/10/six-ways-make-your-orcid-id-work-you
What are the benefits of ORCID iD?
Associating your iD with your academic career
With the creation of an ORCID iD, you can link specific aspects of your research life to your digital identity. This can include your published papers, received grants, academic awards and any other affiliations you may have. All of these accomplishments will feature in your ORCID profile for everyone to see (if you choose to make it publicly accessible). This can ultimately help you and others to connect with, and become more visible to, other researchers in the wider community.
Centralise, streamline and link
Your ORCID iD will also allow you to centralise and streamline many of the processes that you undertake as a researcher. From publisher portals to grant submission websites, your ORCID iD will allow you to seamlessly sign in to most of the websites necessary in your research processes.
Publisher portals and grant submission websites are only the tip of the iceberg. Over 1,600 journals now require you (as an author) to publish with your ORCID iD and 500 universities and research institutions have all added ORCID integrations as a means to streamline workflows.
Multiple websites and apps that aim to boost academic productivity also use ORCID iD as an identifier for individuals in the wider digital infrastructure. CrossRef, Mendeley, Editage and, of course, Researcher are all examples of productivity tools that have ORCID integrations.
How to Sync your ORCID iD and Researcher profiles
It only takes a few seconds to sync your ORCID iD with Researcher. Open this link here or go to My Profile > Settings > Sync with ORCID iD on an Android or iOS device. From here, just enter your ORCID credentials and voila, you’ll be able to see your papers from your profile, view related metrics, and add an ORCID iD badge to your Researcher profile.
We’re still making a lot of changes at this early stage, so any feedback you may have about our ORCID integration would be very well received. We have many ideas to improve the way in which you can track the impact of your research, discover who is engaging with your paper, and increase the discoverability of your research as soon as it’s published.
If you have any questions regarding ORCID or if you have any suggestions for the metrics related to ORCID and your papers, please email us at info@researcher-app.com.
Thousands of academics around the world are already using Researcher to browse their favourite journals. Researcher is free to download and use on iOS, Android and at www.researcher-app.com.
References
https://orcid.org/about/what-is-orcid/mission
https://orcid.org/blog/2017/08/10/six-ways-make-your-orcid-id-work-you
