As a research organization, you are in a unique position to connect validated, trustworthy information about your researchers and their affiliation with you to their ORCID records. This enables you to take control of how your name is used in the research literature, ands allows you to easily keep track of former staff, students, and faculty. It makes it simple for your researchers to share accurate and authoritative information about their affiliation with your institution when applying for grants, publishing an article, book, or database, and more.
There are two generalized workflows for adding affiliation assertions: by collecting ORCID iDs within your systems at registration or within the users profile pages; or by emailing existing users and asking them to connect their iD to your system.
These workflows are applicable to current research information systems (CRIS systems), human resource systems, profile systems and more.
Workflow 1: Collecting iDs within your systems
In this scenario, ORCID iDs are a requirement of the position/distinction, for example, when joining an organization or accepting an award.
- When registering their details via a web form, registrants are asked to authenticate their ORCID iD and grant your organization permission to interact with their record.
- Once their registration is approved, your system updates the appropriate section of the individual’s ORCID record with details of their position or distinction, connecting them with your organization.
- Display their authenticated ORCID iD alongside any publicly available information about them.
Workflow 2: Collecting iDs retrospectively
If your system already contains information about your researchers and their past activities, or if there is no registration component, you can instead:
- Email individuals a unique link they can use to connect themselves with your system.
- When clicked, this link directs the individual to ORCID to authenticate their iD and grant your organization permission to update their record.
- You then redirect them to a specially created web page you provide.
- Your system stores the link between the ORCID iD and email address/user account, and uses the permissions the individual has granted to update the appropriate section of their ORCID record, connecting them and their activity with your organization.
- Display their authenticated ORCID iD alongside any publicly available information about them.
Affiliation assertions contain start dates and end dates, and we strongly encourage you to populate these fields where possible, as this makes verification of the researcher’s affiliation with your organization easier. The workflows above enable long-term update permissions, which can be used to update the end date when an individual’s affiliation ends. Your system should use the ORCID API to add an end date (where applicable), in order to make the full term of the affiliation clear.
Example
Benefits
You can help your researchers get credit by connecting validated information about their affiliation with you to their ORCID records. At the same time, you will be helping to build trust in scholarly communications. By asserting the connection between individuals and your organization — connections that only your organization can make authoritatively — you ensure that your organization is appropriately acknowledged when your employees and affiliates make professional contributions. That information can then be shared, with the researcher’s permission, with the other systems they interact with, helping to create a trustworthy research information infrastructure.
More information
How do I collect an authenticated ID?
You collect authenticated IDs when you ask a researcher to sign in with their ORCID iD. This process uses a technology called “OAuth” or “SSO” and should be built into your workflow.
See the API Tutorial ‘Get an Authenticated ORCID iD‘ for more details.
How do I request permission to update an ORCID record?
The process to get permission to add or update data on a user’s ORCID record uses OAuth, as described in our 3 Legged OAuth FAQ. Only ORCID members can use the Member API to ask for update permissions. In simple terms it works like this:
- Your local system creates a special link
- When clicked, the user is sent to ORCID, signs in and grants permission
- ORCID sends the user back to your system with an ‘authorization code’
- Your system exchanges that code for an ‘access token’
- The access token lets you update the user’s record
How do I add items to an ORCID record?
Items (works, employment, funding, peer review etc) can be added to an ORCID record using the ORCID member API. You need the following:
- The researchers permission
- Member API credentials
- And either:
- A vendor system that integrates with the ORCID Member API
- Your own system that integrates with the ORCID Member API
What should I communicate to my users?
To support the social component we offer a toolkit of Outreach Resources to help you develop a campaign to support your integration, and communicate to your researchers:
- What ORCID is.
- Why your system collects iDs and how your system will perform tasks, such as updating their records.
- Why your researchers will benefit by creating an ORCID iD and connecting their iDs to your system.
- How ORCID benefits the wider, global research community.
We will be continually building out this “library” of resources based on feedback from the community. If you have an idea for something you might like to see, please feel free to contact us.
Why should I collect authenticated ORCID iDs?
Collecting validated ORCID iDs for individuals through the OAUTH process is important. Individuals sign into their ORCID accounts using their registered email address and password or they can create a new account and then authorize your system to obtain their ORCID iD. This ensures you get the correct ORCID iD for the researcher and that the information on that record reflects their research activities (see What’s So Special About Signing In).
Why should I update ORCID records?
You can help make life easier for your users by connecting validated information to their ORCID records. You will also be helping to build trust in scholarly communications and, by keeping that data up to date, you can reduce the reporting burden for your users and improve data quality.
ORCID for Research Organisations
In addition to its use as a persistent identifier for your researchers, ORCID can help you take control of how your institution’s name is used across research systems. In combination with other persistent identifiers ORCID enables you to authoritatively assert your staff, faculty, and student affiliations with your institution. You can also use ORCID APIs to receive real-time notifications about research activities, to auto-update forms, and to follow your alumni’s careers.
ORCID for Funding Organisations
By embedding ORCID iDs in your funding workflows, you can reliably connect your grantees and funding programs — and save everyone time and reduce errors caused by manual keying of information. Using ORCID in your system(s), you can play your part in building a trusted research information infrastructure by asserting connections between individuals and the grants you award them.
ORCID for Publishers
Researchers are at the heart of everything that scholarly and research publishers do. Accurate author and reviewer information is vital to indexing, search and discovery, publication tracking, funding and resource use attribution, and supporting peer review.
ORCID serves as an information hub, enabling your authors and reviewers to reliably connect to their contributions, and to share information from their ORCID record as they interact with your publishing systems. Collecting iDs for all your authors and reviewers during the publication process — whether for books, journals, datasets, compositions, presentations, code, or a variety of other works — allows for information to be easily shared, ensures researchers can provide consent to share, saves researchers time and hassle, reduces the risk of errors and, critically, enables researchers to get the credit they deserve for the important work they’re doing.
What information does an employment item contain?
All affiliation sections use the same set of metadata in the API:
- Organization name:* The name of the organization at the highest level (e.g. “Boston University”, rather than “Boston University School of Medicine”).
- Organization city:* City of where the organisation is based.
- Organization region: Region of where the organisation is based.
- Organization country* the country of the organisation. This should be populated with the two letter ISO 3166 Alpha-2 country code.
- Organization ID (Ringgold, GRID, or LEI):* A unique identifier for the organization and its source.
- Role/Title: The position held, or the degree awarded or to be awarded.
- Department: Any subdivision of the parent organization.
- URL: A URL to a resource about the affiliation
- Start date: The date the relationship between the researcher and organization began (can be specified down to year, month, and day).
- End date: The date the relationship between the researcher and organization ended (can be specified down to year, month, and day)
- An external persistent identifier describing the affiliation: A unique identifier for the actual affiliation assertion
*Indicates a required field.
Technical documentation
A more detailed tutorial can be found here.