Distinguish Yourself with ORCID

Add information that is important to distinguish you:

• Add all other names you have published under, including:

  • Abbreviations

  • Middle initials

  • Different surnames

  • Non-Latin character sets

• Add all current and past email addresses. You'll need to set one as your primary one, but associating multiple email addresses will allow you to log in with any of them, and prevent the creation of a duplicate account by yourself or your employer.

• Add your education and employment information by clicking on Add Education Manually. Begin typing in the name of your institution, and you will be invited to select from a list. Select the top-level option (such as Massachusetts General Hospital, not Massachusetts General Hospital Research Institute).

• Use and display your ORCID ID in your CV or resume, web page, email signature, business cards and anywhere else you have a public profile. When including your identifier, use the full URL so that people know it is an ORCID iD and can navigate to your ORCID page.

It's recommended that you permit trusted organizations to add and update publications to your record on your behalf. Look for the green iD icon next time you submit a paper, book chapter, or book:

When you provide your iD and grant permissions to a trusted organization, the organization you are connecting to will continuously update your record with information that it can validate and share. More about auto-updates.

Alternatively, the corresponding author can contact the publisher about adding an ORCID iD once the manuscript is accepted for publication. Often, one can do this via the publisher's online submission system, but the exact steps will vary publisher to publisher. As a coauthor, you may be invited to associate your ORCID iD to your manuscript via an automated e-mail from the journal publisher, so be sure to read all correspondence you receive regarding your submitted manuscript.

Once your article has been indexed in PubMed, PubMed can't verify ownership and add ORCID iDs to citations after indexing. However, the publisher can add ORCID iDs to records and you can write to info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov if the publisher needs help with the process.

Delegate access allows a trusted individual to update your ORCID record and act as a proxy for your account. This trusted individual must also have an ORCID iD. 

Trusted individuals have access to your record and can edit any information on it. They may not edit anything that requires you to enter your ORCID password.

To grant access to a trusted individual:

• Go to Account Settings
• Click Trusted Individuals
• In the search box, enter the ORCID iD, email address, or name of the person you want to make a trusted individual
• Click Search
• Click Add next to the name of the user you wish to make a trusted individual
• Click on the user's name if you need to check that you have the right person

Learn more about ORCID's visibility settings. You can adjust these settings for specific parts of your profile. In other words, you can set your education information to be only visible by you, and keep everything else public, or you can hide a certain citation. You have three options for who can view your information:

• Everyone on the web. You can make your profile findable through Google and other search engines, or turn off that setting.
• Trusted parties, or only people you have granted access to your record including trusted organizations and individuals.
• Only me, which includes yourself and any delegates you have set for your account.

There are three ways to add your past papers to ORCID manually:

• Use a CrossRef or Scopus to import from other systems

• Import and export works using a BibTeX file

• Manually type in each article's DOI (Digital Object Identifier)

Google Scholar 

Export your articles as a BibTeX file and import them into ORCID. 

MyNCBI's My Bibliography

You can import citations from My Bibliography into citation software and then use the citation software to create a BibTeX file that can be imported into ORCID. Ask a Librarian if you need help with this.

MyNCBI’s SciENcv

eRA Commons and SciENcv instructions