LibGuides: Researcher Skills Toolkit: Researcher Identifiers

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Researcher identifiers

A researcher identifier is a unique identifier used by authors, publishers, universities, and corporations to match authors to their research outputs.

Researcher identifiers can assist with name ambiguity problems caused by:

Shared names – often more than one researcher in the same field can share the same name
Different versions of names – for example, full name versus just initials. As far as possible, use the same version of your name consistently throughout your career
Transliteration of names, accents and diacritics
Name changes - researchers should try to use a unique name consistently throughout their academic career. If a name is common, consider adding an initial.

ORCID

ORCID stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID. It is a unique, permanent identifier that is portable and will travel with a researcher throughout their career, across organisations, institutions, and countries.

The aim of ORCID is to automate linkages to research outputs such as publications, grants, datasets, patents, and other identifiers, linking these all to the researcher.

An ORCID can be used in the following situations:

When submitting research outputs to a publisher
Media stories
On websites and anywhere a researcher has a public profile
On CVs
Email signatures.

In this video University of Newcastle researchers explain why it is important to create and use an ORCID.

Creating an ORCID
Linking an ORCID to other profiles

As a UON researcher or HDR student you can register for an ORCID via your NURO Profile.

Login to NURO.
From the NURO Homepage > My Actions > Add your ORCID > Click Add
If you already have an ORCID you can sign in with your username and password.
If you do not have an ORCID you can click Register Now and follow the instructions.
Once complete you will see a message in NURO indicating that your ORCID connection has been established. Refresh your browser and your ORCID should display on your NURO homepage.

Note: Setting your profile as public increases your discoverability and allows you to link ORCID to other platforms. Some publisher and grant applications require you to have a public profile.

You can link your ORCID to other research identifiers such as Web of Science ResearcherID or Scopus Author ID to ensure all platforms stay up to date.

Scopus Author Identifier Scopus creates an author identifier for each author with documents indexed in Scopus and distinguishes your research from other authors with similar names, grouping all your documents together.	ResearcherID (Web of Sceince and Publons) A Web of Science ResearcherID is a unique identifier that connects an author with their works in the Web of Science.

Visit the Research Identifiers page for more detail