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FADA - Postgraduate Research Support: Research - ORCID

Research support guide for faculty and students.

ORCID

This page intends to provide basic information on ORCID iDs. It also provides basic guidance on registering for ORCID iDs and how to link them to institutions.

What ina golden sphere are ORCID iDs?

  • ORCID iDs are 16 digit unique and persistent identifiers for researchers & scholars.
  • They can be used in any institution throughout a researcher's career life.
  • They are interoperable across systems of publishers, funding organizations and research institutions.
  • They are non-proprietary IDs provided to researchers freely by ORCID.
ORCID is an acronym for "Open Researcher and Contributor IDentifier"
ORCID is a research community-driven organization that provides:
  • a registry of unique identifiers (ORCID iDs) for researchers & scholars,  
  • a researcher biography platform for each ORCID iDs.

 

 should I use ORCID iDs?

  • to disambiguate yourself from peer researchers with the same or similar names,
  • to gather the published variations of an author's names under one ORCID iD,
  • to ensure your research outputs and activities are correctly attributed to you,
  • to reliably and easily connect you with your contributions and affiliations,
  • to improve recognition and discoverability of you and your research outputs by:
    • funding organizations,
    • publishers,
    • institutions,
    • potential collaborators,
    • anyone interested in your research activities,
  • to simplify application processes whenever needed.

 

 to get the full benefit of using ORCID iDs

  • Register for an ORCID iD.
  • Link it to your institution, in this case, the University of Johannesburg.
  • Use your ORCID iD in your:
    • institutional profile page,
    • research outputs when submitting to publish,
    • email signature,
    • conference presentation,
    • media stories,
    • CV,
    • anywhere you have a public profile.

Google Scholar ID

How to create the profile?

1. Sign in to your Google account, or create one if you don't have one.
2. After you signed in, the Citations sign-up form will ask you to confirm the spelling of your name, to enter your affiliation, etc.
3. On the next page, you will see a list of articles. Add the articles that are yours.
4. Once you're done with adding articles, it will ask you what to do when the article data changes in Google Scholar. You can either have the updates applied to your profile automatically or you can choose to review them beforehand.
5.Finally, you will see your profile. Once you are satisfied with the results, make your profile public.

For more information see the Google Scholar Citations help page.

Unigue Author Identifier

In the context of research, unique author identifiers are one way to solve the problem of author ambiguity. Being able to consistently and accurately identify the author of a piece of research is valuable for researchers (because it means you can quickly find other work by the same author and ensure your own work is linked to you) and for administrators and librarians (because it’s vital to be able to manage and report on the research your institution has produced). (Source)

Several unique author identifiers have been developed to address this issue in recent years, but the three main ones are:

  • ResearcherID (developed by Thomson Reuters and used in Web of Science and related products);
  • Scopus Author ID (developed by Elsevier and used in Scopus and related products); and
  • ORCID (developed by ORCID Inc., which is a non-profit, community-driven organisation, based in the USA but with international membership).
  • Google Scholar Author Profile provides a simple way for authors to keep track of citations to their articles. You can check who is citing your publications, graph citations over time, and compute several citation metrics

Find out why is important as a researcher to have unique author identifiers and how to create them

      

      

Introduction video on ORCID

Add your information / work / publications

Update your personal information

Click on the Account settings tab at the top of the screen to edit your settings, e.g. add or alter your e-mail address, change password, etc.

In My ORCID record you can update your personal information, add education and employment information.

Add your publications

There are four ways to add works to your ORCID record yourself:

  1. Add works by direct import from other systems to import links to your publications and other works to your ORCID record from other databases. This is the recommended process because it reduces or eliminates errors, and enables a reliable connection between your ORCID iD and your works

  2. Add works using an identifier
  3. Importing works from a BibTeX file

  4. Add works manually

Auto-update of records

It is possible to allow publishers and databases such as Crossref or DataCite to use your ORCID information and to update automatically. For example: If you allow Crossref to update your ORCID record it will from then on automatically add your new publications to your ORCID record.

Researchers need to do two things: (1) use your ORCID iD when submitting a paper or dataset, and (2) authorize Crossref and DataCite to update your ORCID record. Please read more about this very useful function here:

https://orcid.org/blog/2016/06/24/auto-update-has-arrived-orcid-records-move-next-level

Import your work from Google Scholar Citation Profile

To import your publications from your Google Scholar Citation Profile, you will need to first export the publications list from Google Scholar in BibTeX format. 

From your Google Scholar Citation profile page, select all your publications, then click Export to a BibTeX file.  Once this is saved, login to your ORCID profile and under Works, select Add Works > Import BibTeX, and follow the instructions.

Detailed instructions on how to do this and to import the list into ORCID can be found here.

What is a Researcher / Author Identifier

What is a Researcher / Author Identifier

Author Identifiers (or Researcher Identifiers) give you the means to unambiguously connect your name(s) with your work throughout your career. Your work may include your papers, datasets, biographical information etc. It is important because:

- it provides a means to distinguish you from other authors with the same or similar names

- it links all your work even if you have used different names during your career

- it helps others to find your research output easily (i.e. funders, other researchers, etc.)

- it ensures that your work is clearly attributed to you.

How to unify your author identity with Scopus and ORCID