Requiring ORCID in Publication Workflows: Open Letter

Major publishers have committed to requiring ORCID iDs in the publishing process for their journals and invite other publishers to do the same.

In November, 2015, a group of publishers asked ORCID to help facilitate communications about their plans to require authors to use an ORCID iD, including hosting this open letter explaining their rationale, developing best practices for using iDs in publishing, and maintaining the signatory list.  The publishers’ goal is to encourage others to join them in supporting the adoption of ORCID. Publishers signing this open letter are committing to requiring ORCID iDs following specific implementation standards.

Why Require ORCID?

ORCID provides a digital name – or iD – that uniquely and persistently identifies researchers and contributors. By connecting this iD to different research activities and affiliations across multiple research information platforms, ORCID helps enable recognition and reduce reporting burdens for researchers. It also enhances the discovery process and lays the foundation for trust in a digital research environment. Crossref’s recently launched Auto-Update functionality – which (with researcher permission) updates an author’s ORCID record when the author uses their iD during the publishing process – further benefits researchers by alleviating the need to re-enter publication data in multiple systems. Importantly, it also provides an independent assertion of the connection between the author and their work.  

With more than 3,000 journals already collecting ORCID iDs from corresponding authors, through all major manuscript submission systems, publishers are in a unique position to facilitate widespread adoption of ORCID. Indeed, researchers are most likely to encounter ORCID in publishing systems: about 75% of registrations occur because journals are asking authors to include their ORCID in new submissions. Researchers are also increasingly encountering ORCID in their university systems, and funders including the Wellcome Trust and EMBO have begun to require the use of ORCID in grant application systems.

In a recent survey of ~6,000 people (mostly researchers) carried out by ORCID, more than 70% said they would welcome compulsory use of ORCID iDs in publishing workflows. From January 2016, several publishers will be requiring the use of ORCID iDs by corresponding authors during the publication process and are inviting other publishers to do the same. This initiative will further speed the implementation of ORCID, support its use by researchers, and illustrate to the research community the benefits of a co-ordinated identifier-based approach to research information management.

Implementation Standard

There are implementation guidelines for publishers who wish to sign this letter. The following minimum standard of implementation ensures the collection of ORCID IDs is efficient, adheres to best practices, and reduces the burden on researchers:

1. Require. ORCID iDs are required for corresponding authors of published papers, with the understanding that ORCID iD collection should be enabled as an option for all authors and should ideally take place at submission.
2. Collect. The collection of ORCID iDs is done via the ORCID API (authenticated ORCID iDs), meaning that authors are not asked to type in or search for their iD.
3. Auto-update. Publisher Crossref DOI metadata is updated to include ORCID iDs for authors, so that Crossref Auto-update can be implemented. The ORCID iD DOI metadata includes the attribute indicating whether the iD was collected using the API (authenticated).
4. Publish. Author/co-author ORCID iDs are embedded into article metadata, at least in online versions, and ideally in print versions of the publication.  At a minimum the ORCID iD logo should be displayed next to the name of each author who has connected their iD; in online versions and metadata, the author name should be hyperlinked to the appropriate ORCID iD directly or via a landing page.  

Join

This is a living document; if you are a publisher and have plans to require ORCID, please use this webform to be added as a signatory.

 

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Signatories

We, the following journals and publishers shall be requiring ORCID iDs for authors, according to the best practices laid out above.  We encourage other publishers to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to join us in adopting ORCID and making it easy for researchers to connect their iD to their contributions and affiliations.

Journal or Publisher	Sign Date	Effective Date of Requirement	Signatory
1. The Royal Society	1 January 2016	1 January 2016	Stuart Taylor Publishing Director
2. PLOS	1 January 2016	7 December 2016	Elizabeth Marincola Chief Executive Officer
3. eLife	1 January 2016	7 January 2016	Mark Patterson Executive Director
4. EMBO Press	1 January 2016	24 February 2016	Bernd Pulverer Head of Scientific Publications
5. American Geophysical Union	1 January 2016	1 March 2016	Brooks Hanson Publishing Director
6. IEEE	1 January 2016	11 July 2016	Sheila Hemami Director & Vice President, Publication Services and Products
7. Hindawi	1 January 2016	1 July 2016	Paul Peters Chief Executive Officer
8. Science journals	1 January 2016	11 March 2016	Marcia McNutt Editor-in-Chief
9. ScienceOpen	7 January 2016	May 2014	Stephanie Dawson Chief Executive Officer
10. Frontiers	7 January 2016		Kamila Markram Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder
11. JMIR Publications	8 January 2016	2014	Gunther Eysenbach  Editor & Publisher
12. Grupo Comunicar Ediciones	8 January 2016		Carmen Fonseca-Mora  International Co-Editor
13. Military Technical Courier	8 January 2016		Nebojsa Gacesa  Editor
14. The Company of Biologists	14 January 2016		Claire Moulton  Publisher
15. IDEA (Instituto de Estudios Avanzados) de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH)	18 January 2016		Manuel Loyola Tapia  Editor
16. Faculty of 1000	15 February 2016		Rebecca Lawrence Editor
17. Japan Epidemiological Association	14 April 2016	1 August 2016	Prof. Hiroyasu Iso President
18. Rockefeller University Press	27 May 2016	21 September 2016	Robert O'Donnell  Director of Publishing Technologies
19. The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery	25 July 2016	1 January 2017	Jason Miller  Executive Publisher
20. Skyfox Publishing	19 October 2016		Katharine de Bergman Managing Editor
21. Wiley	27 November 2016	28 November 2016	Natasha White Marketing Director
22. Royal Society of Chemistry	28 November 2016	30 November 2016	Emma Wilson Director of Publishing
23. American Chemical Society	28 November 2016	2 November 2016	Sarah Tegen VP, Global Editorial & Author Services
24.Wellcome Open Research	29 November 2016	16 November 2016	Robert Kiley Head, Digital Services
25. INFORMS	1 December 2016	1 January 2017	Matthew Walls Director of Publications
26. Springer Nature	3 March 2017	28 April 2017	Alison Mitchell Chief Publishing Advisor
27. Journal of IMAB	22 March 2017		Gospodin Peytchinski Publisher & Executive Director
28. IOP Publishing	17 July 2017	10 September 2017	Jamie Hutchins Publishing & Production Director
29. American Physical Society	17 July 2017		Matthew Salter Publisher
30. Acta Paulista de Enfermagem	17 July 2017		Janine Schirmer Editor in Chief
31. Neotropical Ichthyology	19 July 2017		CS Pavanelli Editor in Chief
32. Nauplius	19 July 2017		Paula Araujo Editor in Chief
33. Neuroscience Bulletin	28 July 2017		Zhirui Liu Scientific Editor
34. Social Sciences Academic Press (China)	1 August 2017		Channing Chai Executive Deputy Director
35. Neural Regeneration Research	3 August 2017		Meng Zhao Managing Editor
36. Society of Open Science	27 December 2017		Pradeep Kumar Editor-in-Chief
37. The Sankalpa International Journal of Management Decisions	27 December 2017		Basanta Kumar Editor
38. Japan Society for Occupational Health	18 January 2018	January 2018	Akizumi Tsutsumi Editor-in-Chief
39. Business Perspectives	29 January 2018		Liudmyla Ostapenko Director
40. Jurnal Kardiologi Indonesia	29 January 2018		Raymond Pranata Managing Editor
41. Revista Brasileira Politica Internacional	15 February 2018		Antonio Carlos Lessa Editor-in-Chief
42. Boletim de Ciencias Geo'desicas	19 February 2018		Luciene Delazari Editor-in-Chief
43. Sociedade Pediatria de São Paulo	20 February 2018		R Guinsburg Editor-in-Chief
44. Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana - Brazilian Journal of Urban Management	26 February 2018		Rodrigo Firmino Editor
45. Revista Texto & Contexto Enfermagem	28 February 2018		Selma Regina de Andrade Editor-in-Chief
46. Brazilian Business Review	7 March 2018		Fabio Motoki Editor-in-Chief
47. Brazilian Journal of Food Technology	7 March 2018		Claire Isabel Grigoli de Luca Sarantopoulos Editor-in-Chief
48. Ciencia Rural	15 March 2018		Rudi Weiblen Chief Editor