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Researcher Profile Guide : ORCID

ORCID Support

Ask a Librarian - UW-Madison Librarians can help you create your ORCID ID and build your ORCID profile. 

ORCID Support Page

ORCID Direct Import

Several organizations allow you to share data about publications & other works between your ORCID record and their platforms. See add works by direct import support page. 

Here are a few highlighted platforms that support data exchange with ORCID: 

ResearcherID: You can enable automatic or one-time data exchange between ORCID and Web of Science, including profile information, publications and verified reviews. 

Scopus Author ID: You can import Author details and publications from Scopus Author Profile into your ORCID profile. 

SciENcv: ORCID account holders who have linked their accounts to NCBI can populate their SciENcv profiles with the information stored in their ORCID accounts.

MLA International Bibliography: You can move works into your ORCID profile with MLA Biblink

ORCID and Data

Data can be an important part of a researcher's scholarly output. 

DataCite: Allows ongoing automated import of information about your datasets that have DOI's into ORCID 

ORCID and Patents

Add your Intellectual Property to your ORCID profile

Lens: If you have a lot of patents, we recommend creating and linking a Lens profile to your ORCID account

You can also add your patents to your ORCID record via direct import from Europe PubMed Central, and DOE/OSTI. See add works by direct import support page. 

Introducing ORCID

ORCID® is a registry of research identifiers. Its purpose is to distinguish scholars from one another (regardless of name variants) and provide those scholars with a means of linking to and sharing their research objects with others, including journal articles, data sets, multimedia projects, and patents. ORCID’s goal is to provide one central service that links with other research identifiers. This eliminates scholars’ need to enter and re-enter the same data and information in different systems. ORCID’s services are for scholars in any discipline, type of organization, or geographic location. Learn more at orcid.org.

Actions

Here are 4 steps you should take to build your ORCID profile: 

  1. Register your ORCID ID 
  2. Link to your institutional account
  3. Build your profile information
  4. Add works to your ORCID record 

Visit the ORCID support page for help with these actions, or contact a UW-Madison Librarian

Benefits

 ORCID has several benefits: 

  • Reliably connects you with your contributions and affiliations
  • Saves you time – “enter once, re-use often”
  • Improves recognition for you and your research outputs
  • Increases discoverability of your research outputs
  • Alleviates mistaken identity
  • You own and control your record, managing what information is connected and how it is shared
  • More and more systems you already use are connected with ORCID
  • Free to register and use

Limitations

ORCID has a few limitations: 

  • Requires an up-front time investment to create a complete profile that automatically updates with new publications
  • Does not provide bibliometric data such as citation tracking or H-index

Additional Information

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a global, not-for-profit entity which offers researchers a free unique identifier (known as an ORCID iD) to researchers in any discipline. As one of the most widely-used researcher profiles, ORCID has registered over 10.5 million users since its launch on October 16, 2012.

Users who register will receive a unique ORCID ID, which consists of a string of 12 digits, and a personal record attached to the ID. Although the ID itself will not change, users can edit and update their profiles as needed.

An ORCID record contains 5 sections: 

  • Employment (Positions held, institutions of employment)
  • Education and qualifications (degrees, institutions attended, additional certifications)
  • Funding 
  • Works (all publications, including books, journal articles, reviews)
  • Peer review (publications by other authors reviewed by record owner)

Users can choose to add as much or as little information to each of these sections. ORCID gives users full control over their profile privacy and allows all details other than the ID itself to be hidden. If desired, users can add Trusted Individuals to their profile and grant these individuals full access to edit and modify their ORCID records.

This short 4-minute video explains how ORCID can benefit you as a researcher: