Six Ways to Make Your ORCID iD Work for You!

Six Ways to Make Your ORCID iD Work for You!
http://orcid.org/blog/2017/08/10/six-ways-make-your-orcid-id-work-you?ref=email

Submitted by Alice Meadows on Thu, 2017-08-10 00:00

Congratulations, you’ve registered for an ORCID iD! The next step is using your iD to build your ORCID record. We know the last thing you want is to have to spend more time updating yet another system, so why not let the organizations and platforms you already interact with do most of the work for you? Not only will it save you time, it also reduces the risk of errors, and helps you ensure trustworthy connections between you and your research contributions and affiliations. After all, who better than your institution to assert where you work? Or your journal to assert articles that you have authored?

We recommend following these six easy steps to building an authoritative ORCID record - while hardly lifting a (digital) finger!

1. Affiliation verified by your institution. Use your ORCID iD whenever you’re prompted to do so in a system that you trust - your institution’s research information management system, a manuscript submission or grant application system, for example. The best ORCID integrations will ask you to sign in to your ORCID account to verify your iD. At the same time, many of them will prompt you to authorize them to access your record. Say yes! They will then be able to add information to your ORCID record and keep it updated on your behalf. This means that, for example, your institution can add your affiliation information - including start date - and edit it if you move departments or leave the organization. Your institution  will appear as the source of that information. You can choose to revoke their access via your ORCID Account Settings at any time if you need to.
2. Automatic updates to your record as you publish. Authorize Crossref and/or DataCite - the main DOI providers for research publications - to automatically update your record whenever you publish a journal article or dataset. Crossref will ask your permission to after your paper has been accepted - look out for an email from them and, when prompted, sign in to your ORCID account and authorize them to update your record. You can activate DataCite’s auto-update feature yourself, independently of the publication process. Simply set up a DataCite profile and enable the ORCID Auto-Update functionality. After that, your ORCID record will automatically update every time one of your works is published. Crossref or DataCite will appear as the source of the information. Often your record will be updated before the article even publishes!
3. Connect to your existing works. Use the ORCID Search & Link tools. Eleven of our member organizations so far have created these tools, which enable you to quickly and easily connect your works to your record. You can import information from some of the biggest databases, like Crossref Metadata Search, ResearcherID, and ScopusID; from discipline specific databases like Europe PubMed Central and the MLA International Bibliography; and country and/or language-specific databases such as Airiti, KoreaMed, and Redalyc. Select the Search & Link option under Add Works in the Works section of your ORCID record, choose the database you want to connect with, and grant permission for it to access and update your ORCID record. You’ll be presented with a list of publications that match the information in your record, and you simply claim the ones that are yours. They will immediately appear in your ORCID record, with the relevant database showing as the source.  
4. Connect to your existing grants. Use the UberResearch Search & Link tool. This works in much the same way as the Search & Link tools for works, enabling you to quickly and easily connect your grants and awards to your record. Click on the Search & Link option in the Funding section of your record, select UberWizard for ORCID, authorize access to your record and claim your grants in the same way as you do your works. The source will be shown as UberResearch.
5. Connect your existing profiles to your ORCID record. Do you already have a ResearcherID or ScopusID profile? What about Kudos, Loop, Mendeley, or Publons? These and other researcher systems have enabled you to connect information from them to your ORCID record. Each works slightly differently, but in all cases you’ll be offered the option to link your iD to your profile and asked to grant permission to update your ORCID record. No need to rekey the same data! You may find that the same works get added to your ORCID record multiple times; if so, we will automatically group them by identifier. If there is no identifier you can opt to group them manually if you wish.
6. Connect your ORCID iD with your institutional sign in credentials. Save yourself time and decrease the risk of inadvertently losing access to your ORCID account by linking your iD to your institutional sign in.  You may also connect to your Facebook and/or Google accounts. This means one less password to remember and also ensures you have more than one way to access your ORCID account. Learn more here.

More systems are connecting to ORCID every week. Look for the green ORCID iD icon in the research systems that you use.  

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