Make 2017 the year of the ORCID

Have you ever come across a request for an “ORCID iD” when submitting a manuscript or signing on as a peer reviewer for a journal? You may be wondering exactly what this iD is and why you should have one. Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID) is a nonprofit association of publishers and academic organizations that maintains a central registry of digital names—or personal identifiers—for researchers, authors, and other contributors to research journals. By associating this identifier, or iD, with research activity and affiliations across platforms, ORCID enables recognition of authors and contributors across platforms and cuts down on burdens to compliance with reporting requirements for researchers.

Wolters Kluwer Health collects ORCID iDs from authors when they submit a manuscript for publication or sign on as a peer reviewer through its Editorial Manager submission program. Having an ORCID iD number allows authors and peer reviewers to use this personal identifier to streamline their sign-on credentials, making it easy for them to sign in once and access all 308 Wolters Kluwer journals.

To date, 76,217 ORCID iDs have been collected from LWW’s Editorial Manager deployments. Of those, 51,109 are authenticated by the user. If an ORCID iD has not been authenticated, it may have been entered by a corresponding author on behalf of a co-author, and this will not be considered authenticated until the co-author confirms it is, in fact, their own accurate ORCID iD in the system.

Why might nearly 60,000 Wolters Kluwer authors find importance in providing this authenticated ID? As if control over one’s own scholarly record and convenient compliance with researcher activity reporting weren’t enough, there is more! ORCID IDs enrich the content discovery process and signify trust in the increasingly digital research environment.

In 2016, dozens of publishers have signed ORCID’s open letter committing to require iDs from researchers, authors, and other workflow participants in the publishing process. Well over 3 million researchers, authors, and workflow participants have registered for their own ORCID iD.

Don’t have an ORCID iD yet? Make it a priority this year! Simply visit www.orcid.org. The sign-up process is free, simple, and will pay dividends by making publishing activity more secure and simplified, and keeping all forms of contribution connected.

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