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Edward G. Miner Library

Publishing Guide: ORCID and other Author Identifiers

What is an author identifier?

Author identifiers provide a reliable method of connecting a researchers work with their name(s).  This includes publications, data sets, biographical information and other scholarly information.  This can be helpful by:

  • Providing a method of removing ambiguity between scholars with similar names
  • Providing a method of linking one's scholarly output to one identity even if a scholars name has changed over their career
  • Allowing for grant funders to easily find your research output
  • Ensuring that all of a scholars work is properly attributed to the correct scholar.

ORCID

What does ORCID stand for?

ORCID stands for Open Researcher & Contributor ID

How do I obtain an ORCID?

You can register for an ORCID via the ORCID Registration page. 

Why should I obtain an ORCID?

ORCID provides a unique persistent digital identifier that allows researchers to distinguish themselves from every other researcher.  The ID offers a mechanism to distinguish individuals with common names, and are not affected by name changes, cultural differences in name order, inconsistent first-name abbreviations, or the use of different alphabets.

How can I associate publications with my ORCID?

Most scholarly publishers accept ORCID's during manuscript submissions. If you give publishers permission to do so, they can automatically update your ORCID profile when the submitted article is published.

You may also import publications, patents, grants and other works into your record any time.

You will then be given several options for searching for, importing or uploading publications to your profile.

 

Other Common Author Identifiers

Product 

  Type Registration Scope/Limitations
Open Identifiers      
ISNI
(International Standard Name Identifier)		 From ISNI International Agency;  ISO (International Organization for Standardization) certified ISNI gets data from many sources. Search existing IDs on the search page. Apply for an ISNI.
  • Very broad in scope. Includes IDs for authors, researchers, artists, performers, publishers and more.
  • Used primarily for identifying organizations, authors of books, and researchers for a limited number of EU countries
Proprietary Identifiers      

Researcher ID

Proprietary - Clarivate

Fill out the web form, then you'll get an email registration to obtain an ID.
  • Integrated with Web of Science and will link your publications in that database to your ID.
     
  • Can manually add publications not included in Web of Science or import them from another source.
  • Thompson Reuters supports ORCID and recommends that authors obtain an ORCID in addition to a Researcher ID. See their page on Researcher ID & ORCID Integration.
Scopus Author Identifier From Elsevier Identifier automatically assigned to all authors indexed in Scopus
  • Articles indexed in Scopus only.
Google Scholar Citations From Google

From Google Scholar click My Citations and login to your Google account. After entering information into your profile Google will retrieve articles likely to be authored by you. Articles can then be added to your profile (in groups and/or individually.)
  • Items indexed by Google Scholar only.
Repository Identifier      
arXiv Author IDs From arXiv

Used to accurately identify contributors to arXiv, an electronic archive of research articles in the sciences maintained by the Cornell University Library. arXiv authors opt-in to create an author ID on the create an author identifier page.
  • Currently links to articles indexed in arXiv only.
  • To see what services arXiv offers based on their identifiers see their author identifiers help page.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the following sources for the information contained in this webpage.  We used concepts and in some cases, wording as well.