What is an ORCID and why should I have one?

by Louise Harrington, Assistant Repository Manager, University Library Service 

 An ORCID is a unique persistent digital identifier that you own and control, and which distinguishes you from other researchers, particularly those with a similar or identical name. It is free to register and use, and you can use your ORCID throughout your career, even if you change institutions, countries or disciplines.

Having a unique identifier such as ORCID, particularly when you have a widely used name, can help to cut down on instances of being linked to the wrong publications, or not being cited in databases such as Dimensions, Scopus or Web of Science. Linking your research publications and other outputs to your ORCID profile also enables them to become more discoverable, and as well as published papers, you can also list your academic qualifications, education, memberships and funded projects.

You can use your ORCID throughout the research workflow, for example, for grant and manuscript submissions and for the peer reviewing process. ORCID is supported and increasingly required by major funders and publishers and is integrated into many other systems including Cardiff University’s Research Portal.

The University Library Service and University IT are currently making changes to the ORCA public interface in order to display the ORCID icon on records for Cardiff authors who have an ORCID in the University’s research systems. If you have a public ORCID iD, the green icon will be displayed next to your name, and clicking on it will enable users to link out to your ORCID record, as demonstrated in the example below:

Bowman, Paul 2020. Metamorphoses of martial arts: meditations on motivations and motive forces during the COVID-19 pandemic. Martial Arts Studies (10) , pp. 128-140. 10.18573/mas.119

This enhancement is to support a UKRI and Wellcome Trust funder requirement, and to give researchers an opportunity to boost their online research profiles. It will take approximately 3 weeks to link all possible records and ORCIDs in the ORCA database. All Cardiff University researchers with public ORCID iDs will be able to see their records linked by the end of this process.

The library has also collaborated with the University’s Research and Innovation Services team to create some short video guides on creating an ORCID, how to upload publications to your ORCID profile, and how to link ORCID and the university research systems.

One final tip: you can add your ORCID to your email signature so that other people can easily see your work!