ORCID iDs Help Link Authors and Their Research Results on SciTech Connect

Name ambiguity is an age-old problem for authors, especially for researchers, when so much importance is placed on author contribution and the scholarly output of research funding. ORCID (link is external), a nonprofit organization working to connect and identify research and researchers, aims to resolve the issue of authorship confusion and help authors retain credit for their works through the use of persistent digital identifiers, or ORCID iDs.  Through ORCID, authors can register and be assigned a unique iD, presented in the form of a web address, linked to an author's profile, which will remain valid and stable, regardless of the author's changes in discipline, research project, organization, or position. To date, nearly 2.5 million ORCID iDs have been assigned, and this number is growing daily.

ORCID first opened its registry allowing researchers to register ORCID iDs and link their works to their iDs in 2012, and OSTI was one of the first federal organizations to embrace the ORCID concept. In 2013, OSTI began offering researchers the option to include an ORCID iD with each submission to E-Link, DOE's corporate STI ingest system, and added a field to the search interface for SciTech Connect, the primary repository for DOE scientific and technical information, so that users could find works associated with a particular iD. Now, in 2016, OSTI offers authors the option to add records to the Works section of their ORCID profiles via SciTech Connect, following a brief authorization protocol.

At SciTech Connect, authors can navigate to the authorization portal by selecting "Connect your ORCID iD" and following the prompts. After logging in, authors may search and interact with SciTech to identify records they have authored or co-authored and then select those to be added to their Works.  When the screen is refreshed, the record will appear immediately in their ORCID Works list. Authors may also give a blanket approval, following the same path, so that any time OSTI receives records containing the authors' iDs, they will be automatically added to their ORCID Works. These two methods are convenient means for researchers to update and maintain their professional portfolios.