Why Do Academic Authors Need an ORCID ID?

Publishing an article in an academic, peer-reviewed journal is no small feat. Promoting it and making it more discoverable can be equally hard. But what if readers can’t find your work or mistake you for someone with a similar name? What if a university, grant funder, or potential employer wants to see your full listing of publications—how do you share that information quickly? Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) is a global registry of author and researcher identifiers created through a global effort by publishers, researchers, research institutions, and funders. By signing up, authors create a unique, lifelong ORCID identifier that helps simplify research workflows, resolves name ambiguity (eg, married vs maiden names or similarly spelled names and initials), and ensures accurate research attribution which may help strengthen recognition and credibility within the community. Since the ID is persistent, it is immune to employment changes; all past publications remain permanently linked to the ID. ORCID is a nonprofit, independent organization governed by an elected board of 16 directors from the scholarly research community with the primary goal of promoting openness and transparency in publishing. Authors link all of their publications, including funding history, and these become accessible in one place for anyone who wants to scan the list and potentially cite the articles. Readers can click on the hyperlinked ORCID ID to review an author’s full record, if it has been made publicly available. Authors retain full control over what is made public or private. Crossref is a nonprofit organization that makes research output easier to find, cite, and link. Within the ORCID system, users can grant Crossref permission to link new publications automatically via the ORCID ID in most cases, which streamlines the process. Beginning January 1, 2016, 7 major publishers agreed to sign ORCID’s Open Letter, mandating that authors include an ORCID ID with all manuscript submissions.1 The full list of 72 journals and publishers requiring ORCID IDs by signing the letter is available here: https://orcid.org/content/requiring-orcid-publication-workflows-open-letter. According to Alice Meadows, Director of Community Engagement and Support at ORCID, 5,957,040 ORCID IDs have been created to date. These IDs have been embedded in >500 systems globally from manuscript submission sites to grant applications and research information management systems. As of 2017, 1600 journals required an ORCID ID at the point of submission.2 Creating an ORCID ID allows authors to obtain credit for their work, awards, and affiliations. Authors should include the ID when signing into a university current research information system (CRIS), when submitting a manuscript, or applying for a grant, to ensure transparency and recognition of prior publications. Last year, at the suggestion of ASJ’s publisher, Oxford University Press, ASJ staff began encouraging editorial board members to register for a free ORCID ID and to include the number during the submission process. Oxford is a strong supporter of ORCID and contributed to its startup funding. Since ORCID is multidisciplinary, it serves authors in medicine and science as well as in life sciences and the humanities. Authors who include their ORCID ID number during the submission process will have the number automatically included on the first page of their published article for readers to reference. Members of the editorial board who have signed up also have their ID numbers reflected on the ASJ masthead. For those authors inclined to think that creating an ORCID ID is yet another profile they must maintain, it may be helpful to know the system is linked across other common platforms such as Web of Science, Mendeley, and Scopus, and research information management systems including Converis, Pure, Symplectic Elements, and Vivo.1 If you haven’t yet signed up for any of these systems, creating your free ORCID account is an easy place to start. Interested authors can sign up for an ORCID ID here: https://orcid.org/register and please remember to include the ID number when submitting a new manuscript to ASJ or ASJ Open Forum. When the Royal Society, which has been publishing research for 350 years, began requiring an ORCID ID with new submissions, they published a blog post explaining why and included an explanatory video.3 Is making ORCID IDs mandatory something ASJ is contemplating at this time? No, it is not. However, for the benefit of our authors we intend to keep a close eye on the uptake within our community; this will help inform future policy decisions and should help to determine the potential advantages of ORCID IDs for our authors and readers in discovering ASJ content. In the meantime, we invite you to sound off about ORCID IDs by contacting us at: journal@surgery.org with your opinions. The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article. The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article.