Frequently asked questions

An ORCID iD (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier) is a unique and persistent identifier - a sixteen-digit number - for researchers. It distinguishes you from other researchers and connects you to your scientific work. An ORCID iD is similar to what ISBN is for books or DOI for scientific articles and data.

Creating an ORCID iD is easy and takes little time. You can create your ORCID iD via Pure, the research information system of the UG. This way, your ORCID iD is immediately connected to Pure and your ORCID page is automatically filled with your research output from Pure. Get your ORCID iD.

You can easily connect your ORCID iD to your Pure account. This way your ORCID page will be automatically filled with your research output from Pure.

• Avoid name confusion
  An ORCID iD helps you to link your unique identifier with your publications and research activities. An ORCID iD prevents confusion about author names and ensures you will get credit for your work.
• Increase visibility and impact
  An ORCID iD benefits your visibility and impact. By using an ORCiD, your research output will benefit from improved discoverability. ORCID is indexed by Google Scholar, and you can link your iD to key databases like Web of Science and Scopus. ORCID also links your output to online tools that track the societal impact of your work, such as Altmetric and Impactstory.
• International standard
  ORCID is growing fast as the international identifier for researchers. More and more journals and funders request or even require an ORCID iD if you send in your manuscript or grant application.
• Save time
  Once you have an ORCID iD, you do not have to fill in your address, employment history and affiliation details over and over again when applying for grants or submitting a manuscript. By linking your ORCID iD to other research profiles, you only need to enter your research output, affiliations, grants, etc. once.
• Open and transparent
  ORCID is an open, community-driven, non-profit organization. The identifier is universal and interoperable and it fits within the context of open science.
• Privacy well protected
  Researchers own and control their own ORCID records. As a researcher you decide what to register, what to link to your iD and what organizations you allow access.
• Not limited to a single institution
  You can take your ORCID iD with you throughout your academic career, even when you move from one university or research institute to another.

Unlike other identifiers, ORCID is growing fast as the international identifier for researchers. More and more journals and funders request or even require an ORCID iD if you send in your manuscript or grant application.

ORCID is an open, platform-independent, community-driven, non-profit organization, while Researcher iD and Scopus iD are from commercial institutions (Thomson Reuters and Elsevier).

You can easily link your ORCID to other databases, such as your CrossRef or Scopus. This enables these systems to synchronize and update your ORCID page automatically. See short instruction video.

See also: advantages ORCID iD.

Once you have your ORCID iD, you can allow systems and platforms you trust (Pure, publishers, research databases, etc.) to update your ORCID page automatically. This saves time and prevents errors. Next, you need to start using your ORCID iD in your research activities, such as submitting publications or grant applications.

You can search on https://orcid.org/orcid-search/search for your name and/or organization. Can't find yourself? Then you probably don't have an ORCID iD yet. Should you discover after creating an ORCID iD that you already had an ORCID page, you can merge both pages.

In your Pure account you will find your ORCID iD in your Personal overview when it has already been connected. Don't see an ORCID iD? Then you can easily connect your ORCID iD to Pure.

As soon as you have connected your ORCID iD to your Pure account, an ORCID icon will be shown on your personal profile page. This icon is a link to your ORCID page.

It is possible to merge your pages as long as you have the login details of both. More information: Removing your additional or duplicate ORCID iD.

You can also create an ORCID iD via the ORCID website, but in order to make optimal use of your iD you will have to connect it manually to your Pure account. If you create the ORCID iD directly from Pure, your ORCID page will be automatically filled with your research output from Pure.

By default, your ORCID page - except your email address - is freely accessible to anyone.  However, you can choose to adjust the visibility settings for all individual items in your ORCID page.

You can make information visible to everyone (green), to trusted parties (yellow) or to yourself only (red). Please keep in mind that the information that is only visible to yourself is of limited use, because so called trusted parties do not have access to it and cannot update it.

• 'Everyone' (accessible to every visitor to your profile).
• 'Only for certain organisations or people' (accessible to the organisation or person to whom you have granted access).
• ‘Just me’ (no one but you can see the data).

The data you enter will be stored in the ORCID Registry. International regulations are observed when storing and protecting this data. Most recently, ORCID has aligned with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). More information: ORCID security and GDPR and your rights as a user.

It is possible to add publications to your ORCID page in different ways, automatically and manually. As a result, publications can be duplicated in your ORCID page. Overlap is automatically detected and resolved via identifiers such as DOI. If there is no matching identifier, you can manually merge duplicates.

Your affiliation details are not automatically added to your ORCID page. You have to do this manually. Your ORCID page will automatically be filled with your research output from Pure, but this can take a while. The data between ORCID and Pure is synchronized every 24 hours. You can manually synchronize the data by clicking on the "Export" button behind your ORCID iD in Pure.

See (short instruction video): How to add an employment affiliation to your ORCID record

You decide which organisations or systems your ORCID iD will be connected to. More information: How can I use my ORCID iD.

Within Pure we use your ORCID iD to assign your research output to your profile in Pure. More and more publishers are asking for your ORCID iD when publishing. This is shown in the final publication and also with the data in leading scientific sources such as Web of Science, Scopus and Pubmed. When an ORCID iD is mentioned on the publication our validation team can simply identify you as the author.

Yes, this is possible. By enabling ORCID as source of an Automated search in Pure. Read more on how to do this (PDF).