Names aren't good identifiers. Names aren't used consistently: Brady L. Miller, BL Miller, B Miller, Brady Miller can all refer to the same person. Or they could refer to several people. Names also change through personal choice, marriage, and divorce.

This is where ORCID steps in. An ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) acts like your Social Security number, uniquely identifying you as the author of research outputs. Once you register, you can add information yourself and connect it to data sources like Scopus and Web of Science. If you're faculty, information from ORCID can be pulled into Faculty Force. Use of ORCID is spreading throughout the scholarly landscape. Many publishers require ORCID during manuscript submission. Once you have an ORCID, publishers, indexers, and institutions can use it to reliably associate your work with you, not someone with a similar name. 

Step 1. Register for ORCID in under 30 seconds

• Logon to https://orcid.johnshopkins.edu/secure/connect/?go using the institutional login and your JHED. Using this link gives Hopkins the ability to harvest information from your ORCID and to send information to the system, too.
• When you reach the ORCID page, click Register Now.
• Add your name and email address.
• Choose a default level of privacy for your profile.
• Accept ORCID’s terms of use and assure them that you are not a robot.
• Click “Register."

If you do have an ORCID account:

• Click on this link: https://orcid.org/signin
• Sign in using your Hopkins credentials.
• At the ORCID page, choose Institutional Account
• Then choose either Hopkins button and finish signing in.
• Give Hopkins the ability to update your account. 

Now that you have an ORCID, you can add a lot more information to it (biography, education, and employment are a few). We're going to focus on getting information describing your publications into ORCID. (ORCID does not store the full text of your publications, just the citation information and DOIs to point to the publications.)

Step 2. Complete your publication record
There are 3 ways to add publication information to ORCID. First, navigate to the Works section of your ORCID profile, then click on Add Works. 

1. Search & Link Wizard lets you give permission to data sources to push information to your ORCID profile. Consider enabling CrossRef, since they assign DOIs to most publications and Scopus, since it's a broad index of scholarly literature. 
2. You can upload BibTex files (files ending in .bib) to add publications to your ORCID profile. BibTex is a file format for citations and references. Many reference managers can export your references in this format. 
3. You can choose Add Manually to type in the citation information about a publication. 

ORCID works actively to connect and pull information from more platforms and data sources, expanding the information you can easily link to your ORCID profile. 

Limitations
You still have to spend some time on your ORCID account to take care of duplicate publication entries, make updates, and link new information sources. This is especially important when your ORCID information is used for faculty activity reporting.

Login to your ORCID account and use the functions (add, edit, etc.) at the top of each section to update the information. 

Uses
If you are Hopkins faculty, an up-to-date ORCID profile helps to populate your Faculty Force profile. Faculty Force is the Johns Hopkins university-wide research collaboration and faculty information system.

Publishers and funders are starting to request and publish ORCID links so that people reading one of your publications will be able to easily navigate to a list of your works.

Note
This is adapted from Stacy Konkiel's book, "The 30-Day Impact Challenge: The Ultimate Guide to Raising the Profile of Your Research,"

If you have follow-up questions about ORCID, please contact your librarian or Scholarly Impact Services.