ORCID (Open Researcher Contributor ID) was released in 17 October 2012 as a way or providing researchers with a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher.
Names are not enough to ensure credit for your work and are inadequate for reliably connecting researchers with their research. An ORCID identifier can ensure that your publications, datasets, and other research outputs are connected with you every time.
It also allows for integration in key research workflows, such as manuscript and grant submission, and supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognised. It has been predicted that ORCID will become the “main ID” in the future.
ORCID is an open, non-profit organisation. ORCID iDs can work in cooperation with other researcher identification systems, such as Scopus, ResearcherID and the Australian National Data Service.
The advantage of ORCID is that it is not restricted to a particular publisher-based commercial service such as Scopus(Elsevier) or Web of Science (Thomsen Reuters). Once registered, authors may manage their record of activities and search for others in the Registry.
It is free of charge for individuals to sign up and receive an ORCID ID.
ORCID has several privacy levels, depending on what you prefer. You can set your newly imported works to be Public, Limited Access, or Private. Listen to more about this.
Did you know that you can use your ORCID identifier to generate a list of your outputs when preparing for grant applications or CVs?
The tool, located here, uses the publications on a researchers ORCID and formats them according to the funding scheme or bibliographic style chosen. ORCID data is also supplemented with CrossRef.
Thanks to Adrian Barnett who has made this tool available to the research community.
It is highly recommended that you link your ORCID identifier with any other identifiers you have, such as Scopus and ResearcherID.
You will need to link any Scopus IDs you have from within the ORCID account pages once you have signed up and received an ORCID ID.
NOTE: You will periodically need to "Search and Link" your Scopus ID to your ORCID in order for publications to flow from Scopus into your ORCID profile. Depending on your publication frequency, it is recommended to perform this once every 3-12 months.
To "Search and Link" your Scopus ID to your ORCID profile:
This ResearcherID publication wizard is temporarily unavailable while ResearcherID is moving to Publons. Follow this link to join Publons, find your publications on Web of Science, and export them to ORCID. Recommended for adding multiple published articles to your ORCID record.
To import your publications from your Google Scholar Citation Profile, you will need to first export the publications list from Google Scholar in BibTeX format.
From your Google Scholar Citation profile page, select all your publications, then click Export to a BibTeX file. Once this is saved, login to your ORCID profile and under Works, select Add Works > Import BibTeX, and follow the instructions.
Detailed instructions on how to do this and to import the list into ORCID can be found here.
If you have any datasets shared in Research Data Australia, you can also link these to your ORCID.