ORCID: What is ORCID?

ORCID (Open Researcher & Contributor ID) is a registry of unique identifiers for researchers and scholars that is open, non-profit, transparent, mobile and community-based.

ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and contributor and supports automated linkages across all your professional activities.

ORCID provides two core functions:

• a registry where you can obtain a unique identifier and manage a record of activities
• APIs that support system-to system communication and authentication

ORCID is available free of charge to individuals, who may obtain an ORCID identifier, manage their record of outputs and activities, and search for others in the registry.

"ORCID aims to solve the name ambiguity problem in research and scholarly communications by creating a central registry of unique identifiers for individual researchers and an open and transparent linking mechanism between ORCID and other current researcher ID schemes. These identifiers, and the relationships among them, can be linked to the researcher's output to enhance the scientific discovery process and to improve the efficiency of research funding and collaboration within the research community."

Publishers and Presses including eLife Sciences, Elsevier, Wiley, Public Library of Science, Hindawi and Institute of Physics Publishing.

Research Institutions such as CERN, Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, National Institutes of Health and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Funding Agencies including U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, The Wellcome Trust, Japan Science and Technology Agency, UK National Institute of Health Research

Learned Societies and Professional Associations such as: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); American Chemical Society; IEEE; Optical Society; Modern Lanaguage Association, and many more

Scholarly Sharing Service Providers including  Almetric, Dryad, Peerage of Science, CrossRef, FigShare etc.

Major Research Universities including Texas A&M, Harvard University, Cal Tech, MIT, University of Michigan etc.

UCD is an ORCID Member Organisation. See here for more details on the benefits of ORCID membership for organisations.

ORCID is now integrated with UCD's Research Management System. This means that UCD researchers can link their RMS profile with their ORCID to identify and import their publications and outputs. 

ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier (ORCID ID) that researchers own and control themselves.

Researchers can update their ORCID profile, including their email address, at any time so that other researchers can contact them.