More and more researchers worldwide are using ORCID for networking and academic identity management. Find out about the advantages of using a personal ORCID iD here.

• ORCID stands for Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier and is the name of an international non-profit organisation that emerged from the scientific community.

• ORCID is supported by a global community of universities, non-university research institutions, research funding organisations, publishers and other stakeholders in academia.

• The aim of ORCID is to enable researchers to identify themselves online in apermanent and unique way. To this end, ORCID provides an individual and permanent digital personal identifier: the ORCID iD.

• With its ORCID iD, ORCID offers researchers a trustworthy, easy and transparent way to share information about their own research, publications and institutional affiliation and to increase their own visibility. In doing so, ORCID is committed to high data protection standards.

• Freie Universität Berlin is a member of the ORCID Germany consortium, which includes over 100 German universities and research institutions.                 

• The consortium supports the establishment of ORCID in Germany. It was formed as part of the ORCID DE project (2016-2022), which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Since its foundation in 2016, the consortium has been led by the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) in Hanover.

• As a member of the consortium, Freie Universität Berlin recommends the use of an ORCID iD to all researchers. This recommendation is also part of Freie Universität's open access policy.

• The ORCID iD is a unique identification number consisting of 16 digits and has established itself as the de facto global standard for scientific personal identification since its introduction in 2012.

• You can obtain your ORCID iD by registering an ORCID profile (also known as an ORICD record). The creation and use of your personal ORCID profile is free of charge.      

• The ORCID iD is unique and permanent. It ensures that you as an ORCID user are uniquely identifiable worldwide for the rest of your life.

• Your ORCID iD refers to your individual ORCID profile, in which you can present your institutional affiliations, research activities and publications online. In this way, the ORCID iD ensures that your scientific achievements and publications can be clearly assigned to you at any time and prevents you from being confused with people of the same name. Your ORCID iD therefore promotes your visibility and networking in the scientific community.

• In addition, the ORCID iD is independent of the institution and remains unchanged even if you change employer or research area.

• This fictitious example demonstrates what an ORCID profile can look like:

      https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5727-2427

When communicating with research funders:

• Research funders increasingly expect scientists to use a unique identifier when submitting project proposals or reports. The ORCID iD is preferred by many funding organisations.

• If you define funding organisations as so-called trusted parties, you grant them uncomplicated access to all relevant information about your scientific CV, research and publications. This also applies to information in your profile that is not publicly visible because you only want to make it accessible to certain parties that you consider trustworthy (see also the section "Your rights").

When publishing:

• ORCID facilitates your communication with publishers and journals. Use your ORCID iD when submitting publications so that the publisher or journal can uniquely identify you.

• More and more literature databases are including authors' ORCID iDs in their bibliographic records. If you include your ORCID iD in your publications, you will therefore make your publications easier to find and ensure that they are clearly assigned to you in a literature search.

• If all your publications are labelled with an ORCID iD, you help to ensure that none of your publications are overlooked when creating bibliometric indicators.

With the automatic maintenance of your publication list:

• The publication list in your ORCID profile can be found permanently and institution-dependently on the web and documents your scientific achievements. You can also export this list and use it elsewhere.

• If you would like to simplify the maintenance of your publication list, you can make use of various ORCID functions.

• The most important function is Search & link. This function allows you to link your ORCID profile to services such as Crossref, DataCite, PubMed, OpenAIRE, Web of Science or Scopus. This allows you to import bibliographic data from the systems of these providers into your profile and automatically update your publication list. Please note: If you link your ORCID profile to the platform of one of these providers, you appoint the provider as a Trusted Organisation.

• You can also use the DOIs of your publications to quickly and easily create and add to a publication list in your ORCID profile.

In everyday academic life

• You can also use ORCID iD in your email signature, on your website, in scientific forums and networks and on presentation slides to quickly and easily provide colleagues with all the important information about yourself and your research.

• Data protection and the protection of privacy are among the basic principles of ORCID. ORCID therefore does not collect any private data about users as part of its services.

• An expert opinion commissioned by the German Research Foundation (DFG) confirmed ORCID's GDPR compliance in 2017.

• You are the owner of your ORCID iD. This means you have full control over the content of your ORCID profile at all times. Only your name and your ORCID iD are always public. You manage the visibility settings for all other information in your profile yourself.

• Using the graduated privacy and visibility settings, you determine which of your profile content is openly visible on the network and which content is protected by access restrictions.

• You can select specific organisations and people as trusted parties to give them access to profile content that is invisible to the general public. You can of course cancel this access at any time.

1. Registration with ORCID

• Register with ORCID to receive your ORCID iD. In the registration form, you can enter an e-mail address that you mainly use and an additional e-mail address.

• Ideally, you should add at least one e-mail address to your profile that you will use permanently - even if you change employer.

2. Fill in your ORCID profile with content

• Name details: In addition to the name under which you register, you can enter name variants, different name spellings or your maiden name if applicable.

• E-mail addresses: In addition to the email addresses you use when registering, you can enter other email addresses where you can be contacted.

• Websites and Social Media: You can refer to your websites and social media presences in your profile.

• Other IDs: If available, you can enter other IDs here, such as a Scopus Author ID or ResearcherID from Web of Science, and link to the corresponding profiles. It is also possible to enter a GND number.

• Keywords: You can, for example, describe your research interests and topics in a few keywords.

• Countries: Enter the countries in which you are scientifically or professionally active.

• Biography: Add a short biography of max. 5000 characters.

• Employment: Indicate here current and past professional positions.

• Education and qualifications: Add details on your academic training.

• Professional activities: Here you can indicate, for example, honours and prizes received or memberships in professional societies etc.

• Funding: Provide information on scholarships, third-party funding, etc.

• Works: Create your personal list of publications. Import title data via DOI or use the Search & Link function to link your profile with the world's leading bibliographic databases and have your publication list updated automatically.