ORCID makes researcher profile creation easy

Did you know that there is an easy way to bolster your online researcher identity, and one that is becoming more and more standard in academia?

ORCID — which stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID — is a non-profit organization that provides unique, digital identifiers (ORCID iD) with associated profiles.

Your ORCID profile contains your affiliation, education, professional associations, scholarly works, peer review, and more. Increasingly, granting agencies and journal publishers require researchers to have an ORCID iD.

Benefits of having an ORCID iD and profile include:

• Unique, persistent ID for your lifetime of work.
• Needed for research grants and publishing.
• Customizable auto-updates and profile privacy.
• Differentiate you from other researchers with similar names.
• Create a virtual publication list.
• Integrate with many publications and grant application programs.

“I like that ORCID connects all my publications,” says Steve Whyard, associate dean (research), Faculty of Science, “regardless of which version of my name I use. Many of the peer-reviewed journals use ORCID for quick authentication and sign-ins.”

ORCID is quickly becoming the de facto researcher profile and one that librarians recommend to faculty and researchers.

“In a research study I completed with my colleague, we found that approximately fifty percent of UM STEM faculty have ORCID profiles,” says Justin Fuhr, science librarian at UM Libraries.

UM is part of a group of Canadian postsecondary institutions that manage ORCID across the country, called ORCID-CA, or the ORCID Canada Consortium. One of their goals is for every active Canadian researcher to have an ORCID iD and profile.

“We’re trying to help ORCID-CA reach this goal here at the University of Manitoba, one iD and profile at a time,” Fuhr says.

Ashley Huot, arts and humanities librarian at UM Libraries, emphasizes the value of getting credit for your research output online.

“ORCID increases your discoverability as a researcher,” she says. “In an increasingly online world, showcasing and highlighting your scholarly work online is important. ORCID helps organize your scholarly work, and integration with the Scopus and Web of Science databases allows your profile to update automatically.”

Create once, reuse often! ORCID saves you time — you can use your ORCID profile to add publications to a Canadian Common CV (CCV) when applying for grant funding.

 How to sign up for your ORCID profile

1. Go to https://orcid.org/register.
2. Enter your name and email address(es) and click Next Step.
3. Choose a password.
4. Fill in your current employment information and click Next Step.
5. Choose your visibility settings.
6. Fill in terms and conditions to complete registration.

Learn more about setting up your ORCID profile or contact UM Libraries for assistance.

Libraries Staff