[Taxacom] Open Research Contributor Identifiers (ORCID)

[Andy Mabbett]

I note that a few people posting to this list include a string like:

   ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5882-6823

or:

   ORCID: 0000-0001-5882-6823

in their email signatures (as indeed do I in this post), but from what
I can see in the list's archives, this system has never been explained
here.

An "Open Research Contributor Identifier" (ORCID; <http://orcid.org>),
is a UID (which can be expressed as a URI) for scientific and other
academic authors. Think of it as a DoI for people.

An ORCID disambiguates people with the same or similar names; and
identifies works by the same author under different names (changes on
marriage, divorce; different spellings or initialisations, etc.) as
being by that one person.

As the website says: "ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven
effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher
identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities
and outputs to these identifiers".

Several journals and publishers, not least Nature, are including ORCID
in their publishing workflows, and institutions are including it in
their staff records system.

Individuals can sign up for an ORCID at <http://orcid.org/> and then
include it in their attribution in their research papers, other
publications, correspondence and stationery. I encourage you to do so.

-- 
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5882-6823