What is ORCID iD?
ORCID iD is a unique and persistent identifier for researchers—an ID number that can help make your scholarship easier to find and attribute so that you get credit for all that you do. ORCID uniquely and persistently identifies you and your published work throughout your career, even if you change your name, publish under different variations of your name, move institutions, or switch fields. Through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, ORCID supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized.
What ORCID Does
ORCID works the best when it is linked to a variety of discovery systems (such as Web of Science, MLA, CrossRef, Scopus, UberResearch, EuroPubMed, DataCite) to allow for accurate retrieval of your publications and to help you increase exposure and recognition for your work. When ORCID is used in the manuscript submission process or grant application process, it will permanently link the resulting publication or grant to the author/investigator. It is also used by publishers and funders to facilitate forms submission. For example, NIH and NSF are integrating ORCID iDs into the NCBI SciENcv, to automatically generate the required Biosketch.
If linked within institutional systems, such as faculty information or grants systems at Pitt, ORCID will allow for these system to accurately collect and present your activities (publications, data, and grants) with minimal effort on your part.
With all these connections enabled, ORCID becomes a mechanism to link and reuse research information unambiguously across multiple systems across funders, publishers and institution. ORCID is currently the most widely adopted cross-platform identifier and is required by an increasing number of publishers and funders, including Wiley, The Royal Society, Nature, IEEE, and the Wellcome Trust.
What about other research identifiers?
Before ORCID was created, some database vendors, including Web of Science and Scopus, created their own identifiers. These services are now fully compatible with ORCID:
- You can import all publications associated with your Scopus or Web of Science identifiers into your ORCID profile
- Any publication where you include your ORCID iD will automatically be added to your Web of Science or Scopus profile
Find out more about making these linkages at the ORCID website.
ORCID and Pitt
ORCID integrates with many Pitt information systems--such as the Faculty Information System, InfoEd, Pivot Funding Opportunities, and D-Scholarship@Pitt--streamlining the process of building your digital CV, tenure portfolios, and completing compliance reports.
Graduate students, upload your ETD to D-Scholarship@Pitt, and add in your ORCID iD. This will help others find your work now and in the future, as your career progresses.
Pitt is an institutional member of ORCID. Sharing your ORCID iD and profile with Pitt allows the University to:
- More easily showcase your scholarly output
- Showcase the scholarly output of your department, school, or even the entire University
- Populate local systems to support networking, collaboration, and reporting
- Automate administrative reporting
ORCID and Your Data
ORCID is an open, nonprofit, community-driven effort to create and maintain an international system of researcher IDs.
When it comes to publishers and funding agencies, ORCID does not restrict with whom it works. ORCID’s goal is to work with all such entities in order to connect you and your research and to make your scholarship highly discoverable through many different platforms and systems.
The information in your ORCID Record—positions held, articles published, grants received, e-mail addresses, organizations affiliated with—is non-sensitive and available from other, public sources.
ORCID and Privacy
ORCID users can set certain information to "private"—including their IDs. Learn more about ORCID Privacy Settings.
ORCID is an open, nonprofit, community-driven effort to create and maintain an international system of researcher IDs.
When it comes to publishers and funding agencies, ORCID does not restrict with whom it works. ORCID’s goal is to work with all such entities in order to connect you and your research and to make your scholarship highly discoverable through many different platforms and systems.
The information in your ORCID Record—positions held, articles published, grants received, e-mail addresses, organizations affiliated with—is non-sensitive and available from other, public sources.
For additional information
Check out Frequently Asked Questions About ORCID, or our ORCID@Pitt: What is ORCID? guide.
