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University Library DePaul Library

Faculty Research Guide: ORCID iD's

This guide provides a general overview of library tools to help faculty find resources for publishing their research and determining impact factors in their subject field.

ORCID Overview

ORCID is an acronym for Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID identifiers (ORCID iDs) are persistent unique, open digital identifiers that distinguish you from every other researcher with the same or a similar name to you. Think of an ORCID iD as a DOI (digital object identifier) for researchers and scholars.

Anyone who participates in research, scholarship, or innovation can register an ORCID iD for themselves free of charge. They enable the automation of links to research objects such as publications, grants, presentations, data, patents and more. You can use the same iD throughout your whole career -- even if your name changes or you move to a different organization, discipline, or country. 

Benefits of an ORCID iD

Why use ORCID iDs? ORCID iDs:

  • Resolve issues of name disambiguation.
  • Ensure that a researcher's scholarship is correctly attributed.
  • Are now required by some publishers and funding organizations
  • Can seamlessly add any citation with a DOI to the ORCID profile via a CrossRef and DataCite integration
  • Seamlessly (in many instances) captures/maintains research from past, current, and future places of employment.
  • Can be linked to unique IDs in other systems (Author ID in Scopus) and ResearcherID in Web of Science, to add new citations to the ORCID account automatically.
  • Will increase their integration with publisher and funding agency submission systems, which means that once the item is published or the grant awarded, that information is updated in the appropriate ORCID account(s).

What ORCID Is Not:

  • A social or professional networking site (like ResearchGate, Academia.edu, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.)
  • Invasive -- no constant influx of communication from ORCID

Register for an ORCID

Registering an ORCID iD

  1. Go to: https://orcid.org/register
  2. Complete the information on the form
    • name
    • e-mail
      • An account already exists: You will see a warning message if your email address is already associated with an ORCID iD. You cannot create a second account using the same email address. Reset your password to restore access to the account.
    • set a password
    • current employment
  3. Determine the default level of privacy you want. (ORCID recommends choosing Everyone or Trusted Parties as your default visibility setting as this will enable your information to be shared with the systems you interact with, allowing you to benefit from their ORCID integrations.) 
    Everyone
    Trusted Parties
    Only Me
  4. Un-select notification e-mail check boxes according to your preference.
  5. Select the "Terms of Use" checkbox -- required to register.
  6. Click the "Register" button. 

Completing your ORCID profile

On the left sidebar, provide the following information:

  • "Also known as" -- all the name variants you have used for your research (including abbreviations, transliterations, name changes, etc.)
  • Country -- country with which you are affiliated
  • Keywords -- words or phrases that describe your research interests
  • Websites -- any websites you have related to your research, including your Google Scholar Profile.

Complete the following information:

  • Biography
  • Education
  • Employment
  • Funding 
  • Works -- Add works using your Scopus Author ID, your Web of Knowledge ResearcherID, your citation account at Google Scholar, works indexed in any resource that supports the export of a BibTeX file, or add them manually.

For detailed information about all aspects of your ORCID profile, use the documentation provided by ORCID.

Other Author Profiles

Author profiles allow you to link all of your publications to yourself and your institution in one profile, while also distinguishing your work from the works of others who have the same name as you.

Use your iD!

Include your ORCID iD on your web page and email signature, and use it when prompted as you submit a manuscript, apply for a grant, and in any other research workflow to ensure you get credit for your work. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) encourages researchers to use ORCID iDs to create and maintain biographical sketches (biosketches) for grant applications and annual reports. All proposal submissions to the NSF require ORCID iDs.

Since 2020, ORCID iDs have been required for all National Institutes of Health (NIH), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) grant submissions.