ORCID
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a persistent identifier for researchers. Your personal ORCID ID distinguishes you from other researchers, globally. It's free to register and lets you link all your research publications and other outputs to your ORCID record, to help maximise the impact of your research.
When you link your ORCiD to your works, they will be linked unambigously to you and can be easily imported into research systems. This reduces the time and effort needed to manage and edit your publications records in your profile.
If you are a staff researcher with a BRAD account, connect your ORCID record to your BRAD profile as detailed below to allow information about new and existing publications associated with your unique ID to be imported to BRAD automatically as soon as they are published.
How do I register for an ORCID number or link my ID to BRAD?
Our Distinguish yourself with ORCID guide (PDF) explains ORCID's benefits, how to sign up and populate your record, or follow the instructions below.
Get an ORCID number
If you are a member of staff and but don't yet have an ORCID ID, sign up via BRAD, Brunel's internal research database, following the instructions below. Doctoral researchers and staff who are not eligible for a BRAD account can register on the ORCID website. If you have signed up for ORCID previously, you should not sign up for a new account, but should foll
- Log in to BRAD.
- Under My actions, click Add ORCID.
- Click Register now and enter your details in the form.
- Choose 'Authorize' to connect your ORCID account to BRAD.
Link an existing ORCID number to BRAD
If you already have an ORCID number, you will only need to link it to your BRAD profile. To do so, you will need to have your existing ORCiD login details ready.
- Log in to BRAD.
- Under My actions, click Add ORCID.
- Sign in to your existing account with your existing ORCID credentials.
- Choose 'Authorize' to connect your ORCID account to BRAD.
You can view your 16-digit ORCID number at any time under your name in your BRAD profile or find it on the ORCID website.
Why do I need an ORCID number?
To get full credit for your research. Your ORCID is an internationally recognised standard identifier, permanently linked to you. It disambiguates you from others with the same or similar names, globally. Works which display your ORCID number, will allow your authorship or contribution to be easily credited to you.
You will benefit from having an ORCID ID if any of the following apply:
Often, authors publishing under multiple name variants may be assigned a unique identifier for each name variant by different publishers. This may mean that your research outputs and impact can be spread across multiple author IDs in publisher and analytics databases like Scopus® and Web of Science. However, you can use your ORCID to link multiple author IDs to a single record.
Showcase your outputs to funders, collaborators and peers. ORCID is increasingly used by funders and publishers to view and manage information. Funders review grant applicant's ORCID records to access previous publications lists when evaluating research funding proposals. Other researchers may use it to identify potential collaborators, and employers may review publications lists associated with your ORCID to check open access status, or assess suitability for employment or promotion.
Keep track of your work. If you have a large number of publications and other outputs, or publish with a large number of co-authors, an ORCID can help you keep track of your research outputs and contributions.
Take your records with you and save time. Increasingly, publishers include author ORCID on published outputs. ORCID is non-proprietary, so helps you maintain a complete and portable record of your outputs and activities wherever you work. It facilitates interoperability between systems, making it easier to transfer and link associated records. This reduces the need to enter the same information in multiple places, saving time and effort. You can authorise your ORCID to import records from relevant metadata sources and manually add non-standard research, like creative outputs.
Personalise your ORCID
Personalise your record. Add a bio, education and employment history to enhance your ORCID record by logging in on the ORCID website. This ORCID blog post also explains what to do next to add or update your profile information. Keep your ORCID record, profile and email address up to date, as funders, employers and collaborators may review it and your linked works.
Add your works. Log in to your account on the ORCID website, and from your ORCID record add works by choosing the search and link option to select and link appropriate data sources. These will locate and import metadata for your publications. You will need to accept publications which are yours to add them to your profile. Once connected, ORCID should automatically discover publications metadata from linked data sources when available.
Refine the data sources. You choose which of the available data sources you wish to authorise ORCID to search automatically for output information connected to you. The sources each researcher selects may vary depend on their publishing profile and discipline. It is common to authorise a combination of data sources for best results, for example:
- CrossRef Metadata Search and Scopus to ORCID help import records from a range of disciplines, from the sciences to humanities.
- Europe PubMed Central is useful for health, clinical and life sciences.
- ISNI2ORCID search and link is useful if you publish books / monographs in any discipline.
- DataCite Metadata Store helps you link datasets with DOIs to your profile. Brunel researchers can get a DOI for published datasets through Brunel figshare - see Publish your data.
See the full list and description of ORCID's data sources to help you decide which ones are best for you.
Add other outputs manually. You can also add works manually, or import works to your ORCID records from Google Scholar. This is useful for works which do not have a linked data source, such as patents or creative outputs. If you have a list of publications you may need to export your works as a BibTeX file, which can then be imported to ORCID. See how to add works to your ORCID record for information on how to do this.
Link your other identifiers. You can also link other identifiers to your ORCID account. Scopus Author ID and Researcher ID are both ORCID compatible. You can import records from Scopus and Web of Science to populate your ORCID profile. This helps you make sure all your outputs are visible and discoverable via a single route.
• Linking Scopus Author ID to ORCID
• Linking Researcher ID to ORCID
Associate your ORCID ID with your published outputs. Once your profile is populated, make sure you include your ORCID identifier when submitting a grant application or publication and on datasets, research blogs, presentations, business cards and personal websites. This will help records become visible to ORCID, and in time, will support the automatic association and import of works to and from your record. It will also help transfer works information between systems that ORCID is connected to. See how to display your ORCID identifier.