ORCID is a free service to help researchers create and maintain information about their scholarly activity. An ORCID ID is available to anyone, and is a randomly-assigned, sixteen-digit number that uniquely distinguishes an author or researcher from others.
An ORCID record can contain information about the researcher's full work history, education, and other bibliographic information.
The main benefit is that it helps distinguish authors with similar names, as well as, allowing authors to gather all of their research into one place even if authors use variations of their name or even change names entirely. ORCID is not a service provided by the researcher's institution, but stays with the researcher throughout their career. ORCID ensures that scholarly societies, publishers, and funders can quickly find and distinguish your work from materials created by researchers with similar names.
Trusted Parties
Trusted Parties can be set-up to allow others access to an ORCID account. There are two types of Trusted Parties: Trusted Organization and Trusted Individual.
A Trusted Organization is an organization that you want to interact with your account. You can control the permissions the organization has, from just seeing your ORCID ID to updating your information. Some universities have set up trusted organization pages to identify scholarly activity throughout campus.
A Trusted Individual is a proxy for updating your account - someone who helps
you maintain the information in your profile. They are able to edit any information
on your ORCID record. Trusted Individuals will need an ORCID ID to access
your record.
You can revoke access to a Trusted Organization or a Trusted Party at any time.
Once faculty have ORCID IDs, they should include their ORCID ID in all publications, grant applications, contact information, profiles, or other scholarly communications.