It is important to establish a unique professional identity throughout your academic and research career.

Your name may be central to your profile, but it's not enough to reliably distinguish you and ensure that you get the credit for your work. This is especially the case when information about you and your research is shared electronically between systems.

Using an ORCID iD ensures that your publications and other research activities are correctly linked to you.

It promotes discoverability of your research activities and makes sure you get the credit for the work you do.

It makes it easier share information about your research outputs and activities between systems and services, increasing accuracy and reducing the need to enter the same information multiple times.

The more individuals, institutions, and services that adopt ORCID, the more effective it will become.

The unique benefit of ORCID is that it provides a universal, non-proprietary identification number. This can be used across systems to tie together the various places in which your online profile exists - universities, publishers, research funders, social media, or any other organisations.

Some people find it useful to add information about themselves and their research activities, but you can get the benefits of having an ORCID iD while only entering minimal information to your profile.

The ORCID (Open Researcher & Contributor IDentifier) registry is managed by ORCID (Inc.), a not-for-profit organisation formed in 2010.

ORCID is dedicated to solving the name ambiguity problem by giving researchers and authors a single unique ID which works across the research landscape.

The work of ORCID is guided by an agreed set of principles.

ORCID operates internationally with its headquarters in Bethesda, USA.

More information on ORCID and its organisational structure is provided within their FAQs.

Information kept by ORCID is protected by their privacy policy, which is designed to comply with US 'Safe Harbor' principles. The ORCID web services are also TRUSTe certified.

ORCID offer a range of privacy settings for you to choose from that can be applied to different parts of your record. These can be set within your account settings. Information set as 'private' is not shared with any third parties, including the University, unless you specifically delegate access.

Information about ORCID's commitment to information security is contained in their privacy policy.

Further information about how ORCID ensure the security of your data is available on their support pages.

ORCID is independent from any publisher, unlike - for example - the Scopus Author Identifier or the Thomson Reuters (Web of Science) ResearcherID.

However, an increasing number of publishers are working with ORCID to synchronise different identifier systems.

In Scopus:

• The Author search includes an option to search by ORCID iD.
• The Author profile displays the ORCID iD where present.
• For ORCID iD holders with a Scopus Author Identifer, the Scopus Author Feedback wizard enables you to import your Identifier into your ORCID profile, along with your list of publications from Scopus.

In Web of Science:

• Search by ORCID iD using the Author Identifiers field.
• Author Information includes the ORCID iD where present.
• Authors can associate their ORCID iD with their Thomson Reuters Researcher ID, to exchange profile data in either direction.

The ISO's International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) works in a similar way to ORCID, but they are designed to serve different communities and different needs.

ISNI operates across various media and is primarily designed to ensure the smooth allocation of royalties.

ORCID, on the other hand, is designed specifically for researchers, and uses richer metadata specific to scholarly communication.

ORCID and ISNI have agreed a system of interoperability between the two identifiers and are working on full integration.