BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
13
AUGUST
2014
ORCID: The One and Only You
In the July newsletter we announced that the
Bio-
physical Journal
was collecting ORCID identifiers
through the manuscript submission system. But,
what exactly is ORCID and why should you have
an ORCID identifier?
ORCID stands for Open Researcher and Contrib-
utor ID and consists of a 16-digit unique digital
identifier that distinguishes each researcher.
It has
been likened to a social security number and a bar
code for investigators, both of which are apt de-
scriptors. It is what an ISSN number is to journals
or a DOI is to an online article.
A primary aim of ORCID is to ensure that
researchers are associated with and recognized for
their work throughout their career. Imagine if
your name is J. Smith, Y. Zhang, or J. Gonzalez.
You are applying for grants and publishing papers
along with many other people named J. Smith,
Y. Zhang, or J. Gonzalez. Even if your name is
not common, it can change (through marriage),
have a unique name order (in certain cultures),
or be scattered throughout the literature with
inconsistent use of first-name abbreviations. The
ORCID system attributes research outputs to their
true author through the use of a unique identifier
and supports linkages among all of a researcher’s
professional activities.
In addition to name recognition and attribution,
ORCID supports integrated workflow systems
whereby instead of filling out personal details
on electronic forms associated with submitting
papers or applying for grants, a researcher could
also simply type in his or her ORCID number.
Various fields would be completed automatically
by pulling in data from other authorized sources,
such as databases of papers, citations, grants, and
contact details.
Right now, ORCID maintains the registry of
unique identifiers and has been rolling out new
features regularly since its launch in October 2012.
For this to be effective, members of the research
community need to participate, and BPS encour-
ages all of you in the biophysics research commu-
nity to obtain an ORCID identifier. It’s free and it
takes only a short amount of time.
To register, researchers can visit the ORCID web-
site, orcid.org. There, you can create a complete
online record of your research and publications.
You can also register when submitting your next
manuscript to Biophysical Journal or when pro-
viding an article review (the system will walk you
through the steps). ORCID can be used by edi-
tors, funding agencies, publishers, and institutions
as a linking identifier throughout the entire chain
of the scholarly communication process to allow
reliable attribution of research and all intellectual
property outputs. By offering this service through
the
BJ
submission system, we hope to make it easy
for authors, editors, and reviewers to register for an
ORCID identifier if they do not already have one.
