ORCID@MSK – New Library Service Supporting Researchers’ Scholarly Workflow

UPDATE: The MSK Library is pleased to announce that effective today (03/01/2016) our authors can register at ORCID@MSK.  Authors who already have a Synapse‘s profile will soon receive email notification from the Library about next steps. 

ORCID@MSK is about to bloom….I mean … launch.  The MSK Library staff is very excited to be rolling out this new service in support of our authors.  Our timing coincides with a recent open letter released by a group of publishers (to include eLife, EMBO, PLoS, and Science) announcing their support and commitment in requiring ORCID iDs in their publishing process for their journals, and inviting other publishers to do the same.  Through manuscript submission systems, publishers are in an exclusive position to encourage widespread adoption of ORCID. Nature Publishing Group (NPG), Wiley, and Elsevier have been accepting ORCID iDs for several years, although they have yet to make this a requirement.

Why is this service so important and what are the benefits for our authors?  An ORCID iD from the Open Researcher and Contributor ID registry is a unique, permanent, and universal digital identifier for authors. This 16-digit number (expressed as a URL) serves a valuable purpose – to eliminate author name ambiguity and improve discoverability to one’s research and scholarly works.

Memorial Sloan Kettering is an institutional member of ORCID.org and once ORCID@MSK is launched, we will be encouraging all our authors to register as this identifier over time will become a requirement in the scholarly publishing landscape.

ORCID iDs will create greater efficiencies for authors, publishers, funders, and others involved in scholarly communication activities. This identifier is being included as a searchable field in bibliographic and abstracting databases (e.g. PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science), will ensure that all scientific and research contributions are associated with the “right” researcher, and will aid in automatically populating an NIH biographical sketch. This translates to no more re-typing the same data!

We will be launching ORCID@MSK before end of February.  Below is a sneak peek of what MSK authors can look forward to seeing and the benefits of registering through ORCID@MSK

Introducing ORCID@MSK homepage – Click on Connect to ORCID button to continue. You’ll also be able to visit the informational page to learn more about this service.

After you have clicked on the Connect to ORCID button, you’ll be taken to the screen below where you should enter your Name and MSK email address.

Your ORCID iD has been created with MSK affiliation. Once done, a confirmation email will be sent. If you have publications (works) in Synapse, these items can be uploaded to your ORCID profile – a benefit of using ORCID@MSK!

Below is an example of an ORCID profile featuring an MSK physician.  This individual’s employment and work “source” is attributed to ORCID@MSK.  All works (article, book, book chapter, meeting abstract) are vetted before they are added to Synapse which populated this individual’s ORCID profile – a benefit of using ORCID@MSK!

Updating your ORCID profile is easy to do. Besides adding all your research activities, you can add funding awards. There are other sources in addition to ORCID@MSK that you can use to upload references to your profile.  Try your MyNCBI SciENcv profile which allows users to note their ORCID iDs and upload works.  While ORCID profiles are public, all users have the option to associate a privacy (who can view) level to each work – everyone, trusted parties (e.g. MSK Library), or only me (author).

Should you have any questions regarding ORCID@MSK, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us – we would be happy to share additional information about this new service.  You can contact any member of the project team (Donna Gibson, Antonio DeRosa, Bernadette Joe, or Eric Muzzy) or email ask-a-librarian.