Subject Guides: Bibliometrics: a Practical Guide: ORCID

WHY to get your ORCID

ORCID gives researchers and authors a single unique ID which works across the research landscape. Eight reasons to have an ORCID iD:

Distinguish yourself - Ensure that all your research outputs and activities are correctly attributed to you
An international standard - used by publishers, research funders, and universities across the world
It's mandated - for new postgraduate research students and in some grant applications (such as Wellcome Trust and NIHR), and is strongly enouraged for staff submitting to the REF
It's open to all, non-profit and community-driven - a non-proprietary service maintained for the benefit of researchers in all disciplines and at all career stages
persistent - Your ORCID iD belongs to you and stays with you throughout your career, name changes and relocations
Recognised by PURE - helping university systems to synchronise information
...and it's quick and easy - as little as 30 seconds to register

HOW to get your ORCID

If you have a PURE profile

Follow the guidance in the PURE User Gu ide to create an ORCID in PURE or link your existing ORCID.

If you don't have a PURE profile

Create an ORCID iD and link it to your scopus ID and ResearcherID.

Our Tip: Your ORCID profile becomes even more powerful if you link it with other researcher profiles like Pure, Scopus or Web of Science (see box to the left).

Want to learn more?

The unique benefit of ORCID is that it provides a universal, non-proprietary identification number. This can be used across systems to tie together the various places in which your online profile exists - universities, publishers, research funders, social media, or any other organisations.

Some people find it useful to add information about themselves and their research activities, but you can get the benefits of having an ORCID iD while only entering minimal information to your profile.

The ORCID (Open Researcher & Contributor IDentifier) registry is managed by ORCID (Inc.), a not-for-profit organisation formed in 2010. They operate internationally with its headquarters in Bethesda, USA. The work of ORCID is dedicated to solving the name ambiguity problem by giving researchers and authors a single unique ID which works across the research landscape.

More information on ORCID, its organisational structure, values and principles is provided within their About pages.

Information kept by ORCID is protected by their privacy policy, which is designed to comply with US 'Safe Harbor' principles. The ORCID web services are also TRUSTe certified.

ORCID offer a range of visibility settings (everyone, trusted parties, only me) for you to choose from that can be applied to different parts of your record. Information set as 'only me' can only be seen by you and is not shared with any third parties.

Information about ORCID's commitment to information security is contained in their privacy policy.

Further information about how ORCID ensure the security of your data is available on their support pages.