A Scholarly ID is a unique code that distinguishes you from other authors who may have the same or similar name as yourself. Setting up your Scholarly ID will also allow you to curate your digital identity and help other researchers find your publications. Building a profile that links all your works to your name and unique ID is best practice.
Three of the most common Scholarly Identifiers are listed below with instructions on how to activate and start using your ID.
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a non-profit organization that provides unique identifiers for researchers, which allows their work to be distinguished from others with the same or similar name, and will link an author’s work so they become more findable.
ORCID’s vision is a world where all who participate in research, scholarship, and innovation are uniquely identified and connected to their contributions across disciplines, borders, and time.
ORCID allows you to link a wide variety of formats and lets you control who views your profile and linked works. There are over 4 million ORCID iD users worldwide. To learn more about ORCID, visit their website.
For advice on how to create and use an ORCID iD, visit Create an ORCID iD.
Google Scholar Citations provide a simple way for authors to keep track of citations to their articles. You can check who is citing your publications, graph citations over time, and compute several citation metrics. You can also make your profile public, so that it may appear in Google Scholar results when people search for your name, like example below.
Setting up your profile and adding your work is simple. There are advanced features to add groups of related articles, or to allow Scholar to automatically update your list of articles.
Scopus assigns a unique identifier groups of documents written by a given author, using an algorithm to associate variations in a given author's name and disambiguate between authors with similar names. Scopus Author ID can be associated with an author's ORCHID record, lists other name formats, and provides some publications and citation statistics. When a published article is indexed in Scopus, the ID is automatically generated, but authors can easily correct author profiles (for instance, merging two IDs for the same author) and add their profile to their ORCHID record.
To see your author profile, go to Scopus, and search by Author.
Find more information about Scopus Author ID at the Scopus Access and Use Support Center.