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All Emory faculty, postdocs and graduate student researchers urged to create an ORCID iD
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Give your research the visibility it deserves by taking two important steps: creating an ORCID iD if you don’t have one and, if you do, connecting it to Emory through your university login. 

So, what is ORCID? It stands for Open Researcher and Contributor Identifiers. According to Jody Bailey, who heads Emory Libraries’ Scholarly Communications Office, “ORCID iDs are a win-win for researchers and for the institution, connecting researchers to their academic work and affiliating them with Emory as their home base for the cutting-edge research being done here.”

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Free to users, the ORCID iDs help Emory funders, publishers, scholarly societies and other researchers quickly find and distinguish your work from materials created by researchers with similar names. More than 100 publishers now require authors to submit an ORCID iD with their journal articles, including SAGE, the Royal Society, PLOS, Springer Nature, BMJ and Wiley. 

There is special urgency behind this drive to have Emory researchers — which includes faculty, postdocs and graduate students — establish ORCID iDs: as of January 2023, all U.S. federal funding agencies will require researchers to have a digital persistent identifier, and an ORCID iD is the only one that meets all criteria established by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. 

Ravi V. Bellamkonda, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, has an ORCID iD and champions their use across Emory, saying, “Our faculty produce incredible scholarship, providing abundant evidence of Emory’s culture of world-class research. I encourage all faculty, postdocs and graduate students to create and populate their own ORCID iDs as a way to showcase both their personal scholarly achievements and the collective eminence of our Emory research community.”

Bailey is part of an Emory committee that fully vetted digital identifiers before issuing the ORCID recommendation. The group features representatives from the Office of the Provost, Office of Information Technology, Office of the Senior Vice President for Research, Research Administration and the Libraries. 

“As a not-for-profit organization run by and for researchers, ORCID is a positive force in the research ecosystem because its platform is interoperable with so many other parts of the system. Researchers’ data in ORCID records is machine-readable, allowing for more accurate data collection and easier sharing with funders and accrediting organizations. ORCID will not sell our data, and they will serve as a trusted steward, preserving it for many decades to come,” says Bailey.

Lisa Macklin, associate vice provost and university librarian, sees ORCID’s value from her twin perspectives as a lawyer and librarian. She points out that “in today’s interconnected digital world, it’s critical that Emory researchers be uniquely identified with their work throughout their careers. I have found that it allows me to easily add my biographical information, affiliations, publications and grants.”

The ease of creating and connecting your ORCID iD

Bailey has a page on the library site with a video about the benefits of establishing an iD, ORCID FAQs and the simple steps for creating an ORCID iD and connecting it to Emory. 

Among its benefits, an ORCID iD:

  • Distinguishes among researchers with the same or similar names.
  • Avoids confusion for those who have changed their names or published under different versions of their names. 
  • Stays with researchers throughout their careers if they change institutions or make other major professional transitions. 
  • Can be widely shared with collaborators, funders, publishers and employers, saving time and reducing effort.

Bailey also provides tips for using ORCID, which include: 

  • If you have published under other names, be sure that this is reflected in your ORCID profile.
  • Use your ORCID iD when submitting manuscripts and grant proposals. 
  • Link your ORCID iD to other services, including eRA Commons, Scopus Author ID, figshare and professional organizations.
  • Display your ORCID iD on posters, webpages, email signature lines, blogs and social media accounts — don’t miss an opportunity to refer others to the body of your research.

Valeda F. Dent, vice provost of libraries and museum, urges researchers to take action now, noting: “One of the affordances of ORCID is the way it supports equitable, inclusive practices within the scholarly communications framework. By creating a freely available, formal structure to disambiguate researchers from one another, ORCID supports the importance of individual identity as defined by each researcher. It is also important to remember that, globally, researchers may not have equal access to the resources typically associated with scholarly communication, which can interfere with their ability to promote and claim their own work. ORCID levels this field by empowering researchers to maintain a permanent record of their own research.” 

The calendar pages are flying

January will be here before we know it, Bailey advises. Don’t delay in taking this important step. Any researcher with questions is welcome to contact her. 

“This identifier has become the global standard in the research ecosystem, and we are proud to be participating in the effort to increase awareness and use of it on the Emory campus,” says Bailey.


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