Open Researcher and Contributor IDs (ORCID IDs) are unique, persistent digital identifiers that help to distinguish researchers from one another and reliably link them to their scholarly contributions. Researchers can connect their ORCID ID with a variety of professional information, including affiliations, grants, publications, peer review, datasets, patents, multimedia projects, etc. through updating and managing their ORCID record (i.e. ORCID profile).

Benefits:

• It's free!
• Reliably links you to your scholarly contributions, in spite of name variations, name changes, or others having a name identical to yours (i.e. having an ORCID ID helps to resolve name ambiguity)
• Increases the discoverability of your research outputs
• Saves you time reporting research outputs
• Can help with funder compliance (ORCID IDs are required for NIH and NSF grant applications)

Limitations:

• Requires a bit of time to initially set up your profile
• Does not provide citation metrics or h-index calculations

1. Register for an ORCID account here
2. Once you have created an account, you can sign in to ORCID here
3. That's it! You now have an ORCID account that you can update with your scholarly research outputs

Click here to access a downloadable PDF of A Guide to ORCID. This document contains instructions for creating an account, personalizing your account, adding past information, linking new research outputs, removing trusted organizations, adding and removing trusted individuals, editing profiles as a trusted individual, and adjusting privacy settings in ORCID.

For additional information on managing your ORCID account, see ORCID's help documentation.

• What is ORCID?
• What are the benefits and limitations of ORCID?
• How do I get an ORCID Account?
• How do I update and maintain my ORCID profile?

Click here to access a downloadable PDF of A Guide to ORCID. This document includes comprehensive instructions not included on this page, including instructions for creating an account, personalizing your account, adding past information, linking new research outputs, removing trusted organizations, adding and removing trusted individuals, editing profiles as a trusted individual, and adjusting privacy settings in ORCID.

The Ebling Library provides education and consultation services for creating and managing researcher profiles.

For additional information, contact Paije Wilson (paije.wilson@wisc.edu) or Trisha Adamus (adamus@wisc.edu)