ORCiD : Home

This guide explains what ORCiD is, how it can benefit researchers, and ideas of how to use it.

What is an ORCiD?

Note: A recent announcement from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) indicate that ORCIDs will be required for all individuals supported by awards from these agencies beginning in 2020!

An ORCID is a unique16-digit personal identifier that is registered through ORCID.org, a non-profit organization that maintains the registry and website.That number can be attached to any published work that you author in order to help ensure proper attribution and citation of your work, which may help improve your overall scholarly impact.

You can register for an ORCID at no charge on the ORCID.org website. Once registered, you may create a profile page that includes your education, place of employment, alternate names that you've published under, and list of works with links to any official online versions of that work. All of this information may be set to private, public, or trusted parties view only, if you like.

The ORCID is expressed as an https URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), sometimes with the ORCID icon attached, as in the example below. This link will also take you to a sample profile page.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097

You can also get a customized QR code that is readable by hand-held scanners, or embedding code to add any website or social media pages. Each of these will take users to your ORCID profile page where they will find whatever attribution information you provide.

For a quick video on setting up an ORCID, see: ORCID 101 for Individuals

And for an overview of an ORCID records, see: A Quick Tour of the ORCID Record

ORCIDs have become increasingly common among academic and professional researchers, and many scholarly publishers now have an option to include them on published works, along with a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), which is assigned by the publisher. The latter is linked to official online versions of the work, rather than to the author, so it's helpful to have both.

Why Use an ORCiD?

Why Use ORCiD?

Disambiguates individuals. This is especially helpful for people with common names or those who have changed their name.
Gives you control of your scholarly profile regardless of name changes, variations of your name in publications, or institution changes
Improves the visibility of your work through a scholarly profile controlled by you
Required by a growing number of publishers (e.g. Wiley, PLOS, Cambridge University Press, and many others)
Required or encouraged by a growing number of funding agencies
Saves you time by allowing information to be entered in one place

Including your ORCiD identifier may be possible or required when you submit a manuscript for publication. This will help to automatically create a new record for that work in your ORCiD record when it's published. Review a current list of publishers who require ORCiD identifiers with submissions.