Registry to distinguish between researchers launches

ORCID  (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) has launched a Registry where researchers can distinguish themselves by creating a unique personal identifier. 

'By registering with ORCID, researchers now can easily and uniquely attach their identity to their research products, from datasets, to equipment, articles, media stories, citations, experiments, patents, and notebooks,' explained Laure Haak, executive director of ORCID.

The project includes universities, publishers, funding bodies and technology companies. 

'Through integration in workflows such as manuscript and grant submission as well as researcher profiles, ORCID promises to help scholars and institutions manage academic information and, ultimately, to provide both with more control over their own record of scholarship,' said Amy Brand, assistant provost for faculty appointments and information at Harvard University.

So far, Boston University, New York University Langone Medical Center, Cornell University, and the California Institute of Technology, and the research information system vendors Avedas, Symplectic, and Thomson Reuters are actively working on integration with the ORCID registry.

Launch publisher partners include Nature Publishing Group, Elsevier, Hindawi, and the American Physical Society (APS).

According to NPG, once researchers have an ORCID identifier, NPG is ready to include them in its manuscript submission system and nature.com registration.

Registrants will be able to link ORCID identifiers to their nature.com profile, and authors will be able to link their ORCID identifiers to their manuscript submissions. Further integration between nature.com, NPG's submission systems and the ORCID registry is planned as ORCID rolls out further functionality, according to the publisher.

ORCID does not aim to compete with existing systems for researcher identification, but to provide a switchboard for crosslinking. For example, Elsevier is providing a way for researchers to link their Scopus Author IDs to ORCID and synchronise their publication information between the two systems. Thomson Reuters’ ResearcherID will link to ORCID and allow researchers to synchronise their publication information.

Several research information system providers are also planning to integrate ORCID identifiers, including KNODE, Faculty of 1000, and ImpactStory. Through its affiliate ORCID EU, ORCID is working with DataCite to link ORCID identifiers with research datasets.