ORCID [ˈɔːrkɪd] provides IDs to uniquely identify authors, regardless of affiliation or name changes. An author profile can be accessed by appending the 16-digit alphanumeric ID to the ORCID URL, e.g., orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097. ORCID is a not-for-profit organization funded by its member organizations, and its software is open-source. In 2019, the University of Cologne joined ORCID.
An author is given full control over displaying, hiding, or removing publications from their public profile page. Trusted organizations can be designated to allow new publications that are associated with the author's ORCID ID to be added automatically to the profile page. Many publishers already request your ORCID ID during the publication process of an article.
By adding all your publications and further information, e.g., your current affiliation (under "Employment"), you facilitate the unique identification of your ORCID profile. Furthermore, ORCID provides a programming interface, which enables the CDS, the University of Cologne, and other interested parties to automatically build a list of and gather information about your publications.
Adding Publications
The methods to add publications to your ORCID profile can be roughly categorized as follows:
- manually (filling out a form),
- semiautomatically (import using BibTeX, DOI, PubMed ID, or in bulk from Crossref (International DOI Foundation), Scopus (Elsevier), Google Scholar, or others),
- automatically (adding trusted organizations (e.g., Crossref) to add new publications automatically; prerequisites apply).
We recommend 1) to always specify your ORCID ID during the publishing process of your works and 2) to link ORCID with Crossref to add it as a trusted organization (see below).
Trusted Parties
Ideally, ORCID IDs are submitted during the publication process to allow the automated maintenance ("auto-update") of ones profile by, e.g., Crossref. If this is not the case, publications have to be added semiautomatically. It should not be necessary to add information manually, however.
To access a page that reveals all organizations or individuals you have granted special access rights to and to revoke these access rights, log in to your ORCID profile, click on your name at the top right, and then on Trusted parties. Note that you cannot add new organizations manually but need to link your ORCID account with, e.g., your Scopus account.
Crossref, Scopus, and Other Search & Link Providers
In order to link your Crossref (or Scopus, ...) account with ORCID and add publications, log in to ORCID, scroll down to Works, click on Add, then Search & link, and then on Crossref Metadata Search (or Scopus - Elsevier, ...). A new page will appear on which you can grant access to Crossref (or others) to—among other things—add to and update your publication list. In a next step, you can link your profile with ORCID and add publications. In case you have linked a Scopus account, your Scopus Author ID will now be listed on your ORCID profile page.
Services that can be selected via Search & Link [retrieved 24 Oct. 2022]: Airiti, BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine, Crossref Metadata Search, DOE / OSTI, DataCite, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB), Europe PubMed Central, HAL, ISNI, JaLC, MLA International Bibliography, OpenAIRE Explore, Redalyc, Research Data Australia, Scopus - Elsevier, The Lens.
Google Scholar, BibTeX, DOI, and PubMed ID
It is recommended to use Search & Link providers to populate your ORCID profile with publications. Ideally, this allows these providers to automatically add new publications to your profile. You can also add publications using their DOI or PubMed ID. Furthermore, BibTeX files can be imported. However, this method is less robust. Many BibTeX fields are not supported or ignored. As a fallback, however, this route can still be helpful.
Google Scholar cannot be linked with ORCID, but on your Google Scholar profile page, you can export all marked titles using the BibTeX format. On ORCID, you can then import the list under Works – Add – Add BibTeX.
ResearcherID
Commercial and proprietary alternative to ORCID. The Search & Link integration is currently unavailable in ORCID. We refer to the following help resources (accessed 25 Oct. 2022):