If you have not heard of ORCID, you might at first think this article title has a typo. Even spellcheck suggests: did you mean orchid? In this case, we aren’t talking about the flower, but instead the acronym for “Open Researcher and Contributor ID.” This is a unique, 16-digit number assigned to you that makes your scholarly works easily findable and correctly attributed. This number is associated with a profile on the ORCID website, where you can choose to include information about these works. This is not limited to journal publications. Instead, your profile can encompass every academic contribution that you wish to document, including educational qualifications, conference proceedings, grants, lectures, datasets, and beyond.
Not only does ORCID help summarize academic contributions in a single location, but it provides other identification benefits as well. For example, attribution questions can arise when people are publishing under similar names or if someone changes their name. With ORCID, ambiguity or concerns with author name discoverability are reduced. This is especially the case when your iD is utilized throughout the publication process. For example, if applying for grants with NIH, NSF, or other institutions that require biosketch creation, connecting ORCID to SciENcv automatically populates fields, lessening some of the proposal work while accurately depicting professional achievements. A publisher might ask for your iD to assist with automatically filling out forms for manuscript submission as well. Rather than simply helping to save time, this can also provide a promotional benefit. People reading an article where your iD is included might be prompted to link into your profile to learn more about your work. Creating a profile in advance is even beneficial if you have never published. If or when you are ready to do so, your ORCID information will be ready to use during the publication process.
ORCID is freely available globally, lasts throughout your career, can save time, and provides discoverability benefits. However, all of this depends on your profile being established correctly. If you are affiliated with Pitt, you can register for an account and grant trusted status to the University of Pittsburgh. To learn more about ORCID, including how to further set up your profile to fully benefit, consider signing up for the HSLS Introduction to ORCID class.
~Francesca Yates