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ORCID for Researchers -FAQ

Frequently asked questions about ORCID for researchers.

If you have questions about the New Zealand ORCID Consortium, and which aren't answered below please feel free to email: orcid@royalsociety.org.nz

As questions are received, they and their answers will appear below:

What is ORCID?

Open ­Researcher and Contributor ­ID gives each person in the worldwide research community a unique identifier that distinguishes them and their professional activities from everyone else. It solves the issue of name ambiguity, where people have the same or similar names or publish under multiple versions of their name: JB Smith; Jane B Smith; Jane Belinda Smith; Smith, JB; Smith, Jane B.

Why should I register for an ORCID ID?

You may already have a ResearchGate, an Academia.edu and a LinkedIn profile as well as a professional CV/website that you maintain. ORCID is different because is not a profile; it is an identifier, allowing you to be distinguished from everyone else in the research community. ORCID does not store files such as pdfs of your published papers.

What information goes into my ORCID ID and who can access it?

Your ORCID ID contains:
Your name, email address(es), keywords relating to your research interests, links to websites (e.g. your personal website, your ResearchGate, LinkedIn pages etc.), education, places of employment, details (but not files) of publications, grants awarded, and any other professional activities you wish to include.
You, the researcher and owner of your ORCID ID, control privacy settings. You can allow trusted parties, such as a publisher, a funder or your employer, to read or write information to your account, saving you time and effort in replicating information on forms. The ORCID message is ‘Enter once, reuse often’.

Will it take a long time to put all of my previous publications into my ORCID record?

ORCID is able to integrate directly with a number of other databases, including Scopus, to allow you to quickly import information about your publications. You can also export information from Google Scholar to your ORCID record, or you can enter information manually.

What are the main benefits to me, personally, in having an ORCID ID?

ORCID will reduce the amount of time you spend keeping your professional record up to date. Your scholarly activities, including publications, grants received, and (depending on the publisher) peer-review activity that you carry out, can be written to your ORCID record by trusted parties, allowed by you. This should save you the time and effort spent entering that same information in other places. Information from your ORCID record can be reused, for example, when you apply for funding. This saves you having to enter the same information in different places over and over again.Some publishers are now requiring ORCID IDs as a requirement for manuscript submissions.

How is ORCID different from sites such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu and Google Scholar?

ORCID is an identifier, not a profiling site. The aim of ORCID is to solve the name disambiguation problem that exists in academia. ORCID does not store your publications although it does allow links to places where your work can be found if it has a permanent identifier, e.g. a DOI.

How is ORCID different from Researcher ID and Scopus ID?

ORCID is supported by the academic community, through organisational membership fees (although free for individual researchers). Researcher ID and Scopus ID are proprietary identifiers linked to Thomson-Reuters' Web of Science database and Elsevier’s Scopus database and other Elsevier products.

What do I do if I discover I have more than one ORCID iD?

Sign into your ORCID iD and go to account settings where there is a ‘remove duplicate’ function. You can find further details at ORCID’s support site.

Can I use ORCID to track my citations?

ORCID doesn’t offer citation analysis directly from your record but you can use your ORCID iD in either Scopus or Web of Science to track your citations. Make sure your ORCID record is fully populated with all of your works by using ORCID's search and link wizards in the ‘works’ section. Use the ‘add works’ function.
In Web of Science enter your ORCID number in the search field and choose ‘author identifier’ from the drop-down menu; click ‘search’. You can then click on the ‘Create Citation Report’ on the results page.
In Scopus you will need to import your Scopus author identifier to your ORCID record. Click on ‘add works’ in ORCID and select the Scopus database. Now go to Scopus and enter your ORCID iD in the author search page and click on the search button. Select your name and then ‘citation overview’.

How does ORCID protect my privacy?

You remain in control of your ORCID account, including who is able to view individual parts of your ORCID record and who is allowed to add information to it. ORCID have their privacy policy on their website.