NHMRC and ARC Statement on Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)

NHMRC and ARC Statement on Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)

April 2015

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Australian Research Council (ARC) encourage all researchers applying for funding to have an ORCID identifier.

The applicant profile section of NHMRC’s Research Grants Management System (RGMS) was changed in 2014 to allow researchers to include their unique identifier (such as ORCID) when updating their CV and Profile, whilst the ARC is currently considering options for the development of a similar capacity within its Research Management System (RMS 2.0). Universities Australia, the Australasian Research Management Society, and the Council of Australian University Librarians have also endorsed a Joint Statement of Principle to adopt (ORCID), and will continue their collaboration with Australian National Data Service, ARC and NHMRC to progress this work.

What is ORCID?

“ORCID is an international, interdisciplinary, open, and not-for-profit organization created in 2010 for the benefit of all stakeholders, including research organizations, research funders, organizations, publishers, and researchers. We aim to transform the research ecosystem by providing a registry of persistent unique identifiers for researchers and scholars and automating linkages to research objects such as publications, grants, and patents” (www.orcid.org). The ORCID researcher identifier is therefore an ID that can be used for disambiguation of researchers, data linking, integration and access.

Why is the use of ORCID being encouraged by NHMRC and ARC?

The use of ORCID may help streamline research administration and reporting for researchers and administering institutions through:

• Facilitating disambiguation of researchers and research outputs.
• Enabling the linking and reuse of high quality, persistent data (e.g. publications, grants).

Are there other unique identifiers apart from ORCID?

There is a large number of unique identifiers available to researchers. Many belong to publishing companies, cover specific niche areas of research/professions, or perform highly specific functions (e.g. ResearcherID, Scopus, Dryad, CrossRef, ISNI). ORCID serves to link together most identifiers into one persistent identifier.

Which other funders use ORCID?

There are >950,000 ORCID(s) issued, with 140 organisational members across 152 countries. Some of the funders who have adopted ORCID include the National Institutes of Health (USA), Wellcome Trust (UK), National Institute for Health Research (UK), US Department of Energy (USA), and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal).