ORCID – Open Researcher and Contributor iD – is a collaborative effort of publishers, research funders and institutions, aims to resolve the author name ambiguity problem in scholarly communication. On registration ORCID provides you a unique 16-digit identifier that distinguishes you from other researchers and a record that supports automatic links among all your professional activities. ORCID is non-proprietory and there is no fee involved in getting an iD.

In scholarly publishing, attributing right papers to right authors is not an easy task.  Because, names of the scholarly authors are not unique. ‘There are approximately 200,000 people per unique surname in China.’ [REF] ‘Close to 85% of China’s population have one of only 129 surnames, and three names in particular, viz. Wang, Li and Chen, are predominant among authors publishing currently. Among Korean authors, Kim and Park account for a large percentage. In India there are many Agarwals, Guptas, Mukherjees, Raos, Sharmas and Singhs among publishing authors.’  [REF]

Benefits of having an ORCID

  1. ORCID enables disambiguation between two or more researchers with the same name.
  2. Researchers can connect their  ORCID iDs with their professional information — affiliations, grants, publications, peer review, and more.
  3. ORCID iD enhancess discoverability of research as  the iDs are indexed by famous databases such as Scopus.