ORCID

Learn how to create and maintain an ORCID record and ways it can be used to support your research activities and career.

What is an ORCID ID?

ORCID is a non-profit organization, which provides a fully open and interoperable identifier to reliably connect researchers with their research contributions.

The Open Researcher and Contributor ID or ORCID ID is a 16-digit identifier that researchers can register and use for free. An ORCID ID:

Connects individuals and their professional contributions across disciplines, organizations, and time.
Enables recognition of all types of research contributions and innovation.
Helps research institutions, funders, publishers, and other organizations better track and support research work.

How ORCID Works

It's a registry of unique persistent identifiers for researchers.
It's a hub that connects researchers with their professional activities and contributions.
It's a global community that enables researchers to share their data with other individuals, organizations, and systems.

Key action items for you

Register for an ORCID ID, go to: https://orcid.org/register
Authorize Stanford University as a trusted organization to read your information with visibility set to Trusted Parties. Go to https://authorize.stanford.edu/orcid/

ORCID: A quick tour

Why you need an ORCID ID

Ensure your work is recognized.

Quickly and unambiguously identify and attribute your work.
Distinguish yourself from every other contributor, even those who share your name.
Gain recognition of your peer reviewing activities.

Maintain all your key information in one place.

ORCID is supported and increasingly required by major funders, publishers, societies, and research organizations.
Save yourself time when applying for funding, jobs, and submitting research to online publication platforms.
Increase discoverability of your research.

ORCID is free, quick and easy to register and use.

ORCID is not for profit: your data is not tracked or sold.
Own and control your own record: choose which information is private and which is shared.
It takes seconds to associate your ORCID ID with an account.

Challenges using author names to identify individuals

What's in a name?

Most names are not unique.
- Many people have the same name.
- Names change from marriage, divorce, gender transition, religious conversion, or other circumstances.
- People use different versions of their name during their career.
- Individuals use different alphabets, abbreviations, or naming conventions.
Researchers are mobile.

Author Disambiguation

Process that aims to find all publications that belong to a given author and distinguish them from publications of other authors who share the same name.
A mere hundred surnames make up over 85% of China's 1.3 billion citizens. The top three - Wang, Li, and Zhang - cover more than 20% of the population.

ORCID 101

ORCID 101 for individuals (text)

How researchers and institutions benefit

Researchers

Improve recognition and discoverability of your research.
Spend more time doing research, less time managing it.
Control and manage a trusted and easily shareable record of your research activities and affiliations - for free.

Institutions

Save time and reduce errors with automated information sharing and cross-system interoperability.
Manage their organization name and their researchers' connections with it.
Maintain links with their researchers - past, present, and future.