Does your name hold you back from getting full credit for your work?

Many researchers are at a disadvantage in sharing or receiving credit because of name changes or having common names or non-western name structures. You might use one name in graduate school and switch to another name later. You might use initials and later change to your full first name. You might change your name through marriage, divorce or other life transition. Search engines are not optimized for these challenges.

ORCID is a registry of unique identifiers for researchers and scholars that is open, non-proprietary, transparent, mobile and community-based. ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other contributor and supports linkages among your professional activities. ORCID is increasingly being used by funding agency and publisher computer systems to identify researchers. Using an ORCID improves accuracy and saves researchers time because they do not have to re-enter their research experience.

VCU Libraries supports the concept of a universal ID for improving scholarly communication.  

Faculty or graduate students who need help, may contact Nina Exner, nexner@vcu.edu, or Hillary Miller, hmiller5@vcu.edu.  

How ORCID helps faculty  

• Like research today, it’s global. It reaches across disciplines, research sectors, and national boundaries.
• Free and non-profit, it has been widely embraced by the academy.
• It connects research and researchers and therefore strengthens the scientific discovery process and improves the efficiency of finding funding and collaborators.
• It follows you throughout your career. Whether you are a new post doc or a seasoned, widely published scholar, this universal ID captures the stream of your scholarly production and makes it easy to aggregate information for grant proposals, systematic or literature reviews, tenure and promotion documentation or other needs.  

The Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) helps you build and maintain your reputation and career. Work can be attributed to you by research and scholarly organizations, funders, publishers, scholarly societies, fellow researchers and academicians. ORCID helps you easily and reliably link your unique identity with your contributions such as datasets, articles, books, media stories, samples, experiments, patents and notebooks.

ORCID is increasingly being used by funding agency and publisher computer systems to identify researchers. Using an ORCID improves accuracy and saves researchers time because they do not have to re-enter their research experience.

HOW TO SET UP AN ORCID

• Find 5 or 10 minutes.  
• Go to http://orcid.org.
• Register for an ORCID.
• 4. Connect your new ID to your work, use your ID on new grants, publications, datasets and more, then share with your colleagues.