Research Impact Challenge 1: Register your ORCID and associate it with your WSU identity

This is the first of 10 challenges to work through over the next two weeks. Each message contains one activity to help you take control of your online scholarly presence and better understand and communicate the impact of your research. Each activity should take between 5 and 30 minutes.

The first five challenge activities will focus on managing your online scholarly identity: how others find you and your work on the web. Let’s get started!

The first challenge: Register your ORCID and connect it to your Washington State University identity.

What is Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)?

What Is ORCID? – ORCID – LibGuides at Washington State University

What is ORCID?

• Watch What is ORCID? from ORCID on Vimeo.
• An open, non-profit, community-based effort to create and maintain a registry of unique research identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers.
• ORCID provides a standard unique author identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized.
• ORCID Registry aims to prevent authorship confusion.
• Some publishers will require an ORCID ID in the SciENcv platform, for linking researchers, their grants and their scientific output.
• To create your own ORCID ID, simply go to the ORCID website and register.

Connecting Researchers and Research

As researchers and scholars, you face the ongoing challenge of distinguishing your research activities from those of others with similar names. You need to be able to easily and uniquely attach your identity to research objects such as datasets, equipment, articles, media stories, citations, experiments, patents, and notebooks. As you collaborate across disciplines, institutions, and borders, you must interact with an increasing number and diversity of research information systems. Entering data over and over again can be time-consuming, and often frustrating.

ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. ORCID is unique in its ability to reach across disciplines, research sectors and national boundaries. It is a hub that connects researchers and research through the embedding of ORCID identifiers in key workflows, such as research profile maintenance, manuscript submissions, grant applications, and patent applications.  

ORCID provides two core functions: (1) a registry to obtain a unique identifier and manage a record of activities, and (2) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that support system-to-system communication and authentication. ORCID makes its code available under an open-source license and will post an annual public data file under a CC0 waiver for free download.  

The ORCID Registry is available free of charge to individuals, who may obtain an ORCID identifier, manage their record of activities, and search for others in the Registry. Organizations may become members to link their records to ORCID identifiers, to update ORCID records, to receive updates from ORCID, and to register their employees and students for ORCID identifiers. 

ORCID records hold non-sensitive information such as name, email, organization, and research activities. ORCID understands the fundamental need for individuals to control how their data are shared and provides tools to manage data privacy. We take steps to protect your information, consistent with the principles set forth in our Privacy Policy, which are intended to comply with the Safe Harbor Principles issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Steps to get your ORCID

To get started with ORCID, follow these three steps:

1. Get an ORCID for free at orcid.org. Use your WSU email to register.
2. Add your scholarly works: Once you’ve created your ORCID ID, you can add works to your record, set up automatic updates, or delegate management of your account to someone else.
3. Use your ORCID ID: Include your ORCID ID on your webpage, when you submit publications, on grant applications, and in other research workflows to ensure that you get credit for your work.

What next? 

• Now that your ORCID exists, spend a little time filling out your profile. This short video, “A Quick Tour of the ORCID Record,” will help you get started: A Quick Tour of the ORCID Record from ORCID on Vimeo.
• Take a moment to add your ORCID to your email signature, your personal webpage—anywhere you typically post your name, affiliation, and contact information. It’s also a good idea to keep it on a sticky note near where you work so you can easily find it and enter it when asked!
• Don’t forget to use your ORCID whenever the opportunity arises! The more it is used, the more useful it will become as a tool to connect your scholarship all across the web.

Learn More

• “Value of ORCID for Research Institutions” one-page explainer, from ORCID

Remember

• ORCID is institution-neutral. Your ORCID stays the same and travels with you no matter where you go. So, if you’re a graduate student at EDI, go ahead and register your ORCID with your WSU email address. Later, should your email address change, you can associate your new email address and identity with your existing ORCID. This way, ORCID’s record of your work and scholarly identity will remain stable, even if your affiliation, email address, or name change.
• ORCID privileges the autonomy, authority, and privacy of each researcher. That means that only you can register an ORCID on your own behalf (University of Michigan cannot do this for you, and nor can any other institution). Only you can control what information is visible on your ORCID profile and to whom. And only you can authorize third-party applications to read from or write to your ORCID profile.
• With your permission, ORCID is ready and waiting to pull in information about your work from other sources, which can save a lot of time and effort when filling out your profile.

Preparing for the next challenge: 

Congratulations! You’ve completed Challenge 1 of the Research Impact Challenge: registering your ORCID and associating it with your WSU identity! In Challenge 2, you’ll claim your Google Scholar Profile.