ORCID

ORCID (Open Researcher & Contributor ID) is a non-profit registry of permanent researcher identifiers and their research products.  Most scholars have run into issues with name ambiguity at one time or another, whether searching for articles by an author with a common name, authors who published under different variants of their name (including in other languages), or who changed their name.  Sometimes even subtle changes, like whether you include a middle initial, can impact the ease with which scholars can find your work.  ORCID aims to solve this problem by providing researchers with a unique ID (like a social security number for your scholarship).

ORCID's services are publisher-neutral and intended for scholars in any discipline, type of organization, or geographic location. You can include many forms of scholarship, from multimedia projects to patents to translations.

Here are a just a few reasons to create an ORCID profile:

• Improve discoverability of your work (and increase citations!)
• Ensure accurate attribution of your work
• Consolidate all your information in one place - no need to type in same information over and over
• Automatically update your research profile
• Required by an increasing number of publishers and funding agencies (e.g., Science, The Royal Society, PLoS)
• Required by many funding agencies (e.g., NSF, NIH)
• Protect your scholarly identity

This Nature blog post explores the benefits of ORCID in more detail.