ORCID is an open, non-profit and community driven initiative.

The 16-digit Open Researcher and Contributor ID, or ORCID is a persistent and unique digital identifier which enables researchers and institutions to maintain a consolidated record of all of their research activities. It also facilitates eligible individuals and organisations in tracking research expertise globally, without naming ambiguity.

ORCID IDs are increasingly used as a search term/method for enhanced research visibility and discoverability.

The benefits of ORCID include:

• Interoperability across publisher submission systems, funding agencies, research repositories, research institutions and supporting automated updating of ORCID researcher profiles (e.g. via databases such as Web of Science and Scopus).
• Elimination of name ambiguities arising from differing name formats, change of names, similar names at the same institution, names with diacritical marks and names appearing in different writing systems.
• Facilitation of a comprehensive listing of research outputs in one place, including datasets, peer review activities and more.
• Improves discoverability by associating your identity to the whole range of your research outputs (articles, citations, datasets, equipment, media stories, experiments, patents, and notebooks). 
• Saving of time through the reuse of publication data as it increasingly works with other systems (manuscript submissions to publishers, funding applications, research tools such as Scopus, and employers or professional associations.

Find out more at ORCID at RMIT (Access via RMIT Researcher Portal)

Register for your ORCID iD

Create your ORCID iD at the ORCiD website:

To register, enter your first and last name and RMIT email address. Note: it is recommended that you add another personal email address to ensure access if you change institutions.

After entering a password and reviewing the notification settings you will be asked to set the visibility settings for your profile: 'Everyone'; 'Trusted parties'; or, 'Only me'. The default is 'Everyone’ but researchers might select 'Only Me’ until everything is set up. 

You can review trusted organisations in the 'Account Settings' section. When you connect your ORCID to another organisation’s system, you will be asked to grant permission to that organisation to interact with your ORCID account. For example, a publisher may request permission to obtain your ORCID when you submit a manuscript. 

Link your ORCiD with RMIT

It is suggested to link your ORCID with RMIT to ensure information can be shared between systems. To do this:

• Click the 'Create or Connect your ORCID iD' link
• You will be prompted to log in to your ORCID account and approve RMIT as a 'Trusted party'. 
• Note: there is a 24-hour delay for this update to occur.