ORCID cookiesORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) maintains a registry of unique identifiers for researchers and allows them to associate their ORCID ids with different name variants as well as education and work history, funding received, and research/creative works.  Unique ORCID ids allow researchers to distinguish themselves from others (name disambiguation) and maximize their research measurement impact.

Name disambiguation is great for people who have common (last) names such as Smith or Lee or for people who have changed their name.  With a unique ORCID id you can distinguish yourself from all the other researchers with your last name and initials.  With a unique ORCID id, you can group together all your works regardless of whether you published under your first name and your last name or your initials and your last name or under your maiden name or married name.

Because all your works are together, it is easier to figure out what your research impact is.  The libraries and the university use a number of different services such as Plum Analytics and Data Analytics which use ORCID ids to track how many times articles are cited or downloaded or tweeted about.  You can also connect your ORCID id to Web of Science and Scopus in order calculate your H-index.

So the beauty of ORCID is the way it integrates with other entities such as publishers, databases, and funding agencies.  Publishers can push article metadata to the ORCID profiles of the authors; databases can correctly group articles by a researcher together, and funding agencies can pull bibliographic information for grant applicants.

Some publishers have been asking for ORCID ids since 2012, but more recently publishers have been requiring authors to submit ORCID ids with their manuscripts.  When authors submit ORCID ids with their articles and their articles receive DOIs, the information or metadata about their published articles are automatically added to their ORCID profiles.

Databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, and MLA International Bibliography are also integrated with ORCID.  So you can use works that are listed in these databases to initially populate your profile.  You can also add your ORCID to these databases so now when someone searches for one variant of your name they will find all the works associated with any of the variants of your name.

Fourteen funding agencies on six different continents are partners with ORCID.  In the US, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has integrated ORCID with its ScienCV platform integrating researchers, their grants, and their scientific output.  This integration makes both applying for grants and reporting on grants much easier for researchers.

So, check out our ORCID research guide for more information on ORCIDs and to find out how to sign-up for one and register it with Baylor.