Guide: ORCID: Building your ORCID profile

You can choose from three settings for the different elements of your profile:

Public Information marked as Public or Everyone can be viewed by anyone who comes to the ORCID.org website or consumed by anyone using the ORCID public API. Data marked as public will also be included in the public data file posted annually by ORCID.
Trusted Parties Information marked as Trusted Parties can be seen by any trusted parties that you have authorised to connect to your ORCID Record. These connections require explicit action on your part. You will be asked if you would like to make a specific connection, and once you have confirmed, the trusted party will be able to see information that you have marked as Trusted Party access in addition to the information marked Public. See 'Trusted Organizations' for more information about trusted parties.
Private Information marked as Private or Only me can only be seen by you. It is also used by ORCID algorithms to help distinguish your identity from another person who may have a similar name, be in a similar field, or may be confused with you for other reasons. This information is not shared with others.

Full details of ORCID's privacy policy are available on their website - see link below.

You can also choose to include details of any funding awards, contracts or grant you have received to support your research.

You can use the ÜberWizard for ORCID to import your grants from major funders worldwide including the Research Councils UK and the Wellcome Trust as well as adding other funding to your profile manually - link below.

Full instructions on how to do this is available in this guide in the Adding Your Funders section.

You can check what the public version of your ORCID profile looks like so that you can make sure that you are only showing information that you are happy with. 

To view with public verison of your profile, sign in and then choose 'view public version' under your ORCID iD

In addition to your registered name, you can add others to your profile - including your published name and any variants in the names that you have used during your career and to publish your research outputs. 

If you do this first BEFORE you start importing your works from other sources, it ensures that you get the best capture and linking of your publications and outputs. 

To add your published name, click on the pencil icon next to your registered name.

To add different versions of your name, click on the pencil icon next to the 'Also known as' section.

Add all the different versions of your name that you might have used in your scholarly activity. This could be just adding extra initials that you might have used, or your middle names or married name.

You can add all of these fields to your profile -  it is not a requirement, but can help to raise your visibility.

• Education & Employment History: adding organisations where you've worked and studied can help anyone searching for your name to know it's you.
• Biographical information: a brief description of your professional career can help identify you to others.
• Keywords: these describe your research interests
• Websites: add links to other systems that you use, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, ResearcherID, blog, personal or institution website
• Email: you can provide alternative email addresses

You can choose different privacy settings for all entries individually.

There are number of ways that you can add your works to your ORCID profile:

• Link your works from another system - for example CrossRef, Scopus or ResearcherID
• Import a BibTex File of your works for example, from Google Scholar (link below)
• Type the details in manually

For full guidance in using these methods, see the Adding Your Works section of this guide.

Search and Link to established databases
If the majority of your work is journal articles, the most effective place to start is using the import wizards to add your works directly from databases such as 'Scopus' (link below) and CrossRef. If you have a 'Researcher ID with Thomson Reuters' Web of Science' (link below), this is also a good starting point. You can do this via the Add Works menu in your profile.

Importing from Google Scholar
You can also choose to import your works from your 'Google Scholar' (link below) profile by using a BibTex file.

Add information manually
If your research outputs are not available in online databases, you can opt to add the details manually.