Welcome! Registering your ORCID iD is an online process that should take less than one minute. You own your ORCID record and, after registering for it yourself, you will be able to update or add information -- or give others permission to do so -- by signing into your account.

This guide will familiarize you with the ORCID registration form.

After submitting your registration, you will be directed to your new ORCID record. Make sure you look for a welcome message from ORCID asking you to verify your email address. If you don’t see it in your main email inbox, check your spam or junk folder.

Registration fields

Below is a description of the registration fields. All required fields that are not completed or requires attention will be highlighted in red. Click on the "i" icon next to any field for more information.

• First name (required): Your given name, or the name you most commonly go by. If you only have one name, you should record it here. This is the only required name field, and is limited to 150 characters.
  
  
  
• Last name: Your family, surname, or last name. This is not a required field, as ORCID is a global service and supports many naming conventions, but you should always include it if you have one. This field is limited to 150 characters.
  
  
  
• Email addresses:
  
  
  • Primary email (required): Your primary email address, entered twice for confirmation. You will use your email address (or ORCID iD) with your password to sign in to the ORCID Registry.
    
    
  • Additional email (strongly recommended): Your secondary (backup) email address. It is strongly recommended that you provide at least one additional email address on registration. This will ensure you can still use your ORCID record if you lose access to your primary email. If you added an institutional email as your primary address, we recommend adding a personal one as backup. You can use any email address connected to your ORCID record, with your password, to sign in to the ORCID Registry. You can add as many additional email addresses as you wish.
    
    
    
  • Email error messages:
    
    
    • An account already exists: You will see a warning message if your email address is already associated with an ORCID iD. You cannot create a second account using the same email address. Reset your password to restore access to the account.
      
      
    • A deactivated record exists: You will see a warning message if your email address is associated with a previously deactivated ORCID record. You can request a link to reactivate the account at the email address(es) on record. Learn more about deactivating an ORCID account.
      
      
    • An unclaimed record exists: You will see a warning message if an account associated with your email address was previously created for you by your institution. You can request a message to activate the record by clicking the “resend the claim email” link or by entering your address at resend claim email. Note that institutions are no longer permitted to create records for their researchers, so this is a legacy issue that will only affect a small number of people. Learn more about the importance of opt-in.
      
      
• Password (required): A password of your choice. Enter it twice to confirm. Passwords must be at least eight characters long and contain at least one number and one alphabetical character or symbol. For more information about what can be included in a password click the "i" icon next to the password box. As you type a password, the required conditions for a password will be checked off and highlighted in green. Very commonly used passwords are not permitted.
  
  
  
• Notification settings: Choose whether to receive quarterly emails from ORCID about new features and tips for making the most of your ORCID record. You can change this preference after registration in your account settings.
  
  ORCID also sends notifications by email and by your ORCID inbox about items related to your account, security, and privacy, including requests from ORCID member organizations for permission to update your record, and changes made to your record by those organizations. The default setting is a weekly summary, and you can change this setting in your account settings.
  
• Visibility settings (required): Select your default visibility setting for any information that you or trusted parties add to your ORCID record. We strongly recommend choosing Everyone or Trusted Parties as your default visibility setting as this will enable your information to be shared with the systems you interact with, allowing you to benefit from their ORCID integrations. Learn more about visibility settings.
  
  
  
• Terms of Use (required): You must check this box indicating that you consent to ORCID's privacy policy and terms and conditions before you can register.
  
  
  
• Human confirmation (required): You must confirm that you are not a robot by completing the reCAPTCHA. Both visual and audio methods are available.
  

After completing these fields, click the Register button at the bottom of the page.

In most cases you will be taken to your new ORCID record, but sometimes you will see a different screen or message:

• Is this you? If one or more records with an identical name already exist in our system, you will be shown a list and prompted to check that none of them are yours. You can click the ORCID iDs listed to view publicly available information and check whether the account belongs to you. If there is not enough information on the ORCID record to know if it is yours, please contact us. If you have never used ORCID before, then it is very unlikely that any of the listed individuals are you and you can click the None of these are me button to get your new ORCID iD.
  

Contents

• Just getting started?
• Verify your email address
• Add your current affiliation
• Add other versions of your name
• Add additional email addresses
• Link your works
• Want to do more?

Just getting started?

If you don't yet have an ORCID iD, register now — it's free and only takes 30 seconds.

Not sure why you need an ORCID iD? Learn more about what ORCID is and why having an ORCID iD is useful:

• Your ORCID iD: your digital name identifier
• What is my ORCID iD and how should I use it?
• Does an ORCID iD assure my identity?
• How is ORCID different from other researcher identifiers?

By adding just a few pieces of information to your ORCID record, you make it possible to distinguish your record and ensure your access to it.  The first step is to verify your email address.

Verify your email address

We request that you verify your email address to access key features of your ORCID record, such as adding items manually. To verify, click the verification link in your welcome email.

Verification is important to ORCID because it ensures that you have access to your record and allows us to contact you in the rare event that we need to send an urgent service announcement or other important notification.

Learn more about verifying your email address.

Add your current affiliation

Adding your education or employment affiliation helps distinguish you from other researchers who share your name but are affiliated with other institutions. You can also specify your title and department. 

Learn more about adding education and employment information to your ORCID record.

Add other versions of your name

Adding additional names you are known by helps identify you. Clicking on the pencil icon next to your name lets you edit the name you registered with as well as enter a published name — the name that you are most commonly known by, and the name that will be included at the top of your ORCID record.

You can also click on the pencil icon next to also known as to enter other names you have used. This can include your middle name(s), married names, initials, and names in different languages or scripts.

Learn more about editing your name and adding other names you are known by to your ORCID record.

Add additional email addresses

Ensure that you never lose access to your ORCID record by registering all of your email addresses on your account. Go to your record page and click on the pencil icon on the Emails box on the left side of the page. Click then on Add another email address and enter any other email address that you actively use. Follow that same process to add more than one backup email address to your account.

Learn more about adding additional email addresses to your ORCID record.

Link your works

Easily import your publications and other research output to your ORCID record. Under the Works header, click add works, then Search & Link and select a tool to import your works automatically, or add them by hand. You'll be prompted to grant access to your ORCID record then taken to the member's website to select the works to add to your ORCID record.

If you're looking to import a large number of works at once, we suggest using the Scopus or Europe PubMed Central wizards.

Learn more about adding works to your ORCID record.

Want to do more?

• Add personal information and links to personal websites
• Add funding information
• Link to other systems to add other identifiers such as Scopus Author ID, ResearcherID, or ISNI

If you have forgotten the email address you used to register you can still access your ORCID record using your ORCID ID:

• If you know your ORCID ID and password, you can use it to sign at https://orcid.org/signin using your 16-digit ORCID iD as the username.  
• If you have forgotten your password, then you should try reseting your password using all of your professional email address and your personal email addresses. See I have forgotten my password for instructions.
• If you are already signed in, you can add and/or update email addresses associated with your ORCID account by clicking on the pencil icon   in the Emails section of your ORCID record

If you are not signed in to ORCID:

To recover your 16-digit ORCID iD:

1. Visit https://orcid.org/reset-password
2. Select the ORCID iD option
3. Enter your email address
4. Select Recover account details
5. Look for an email from reset@notify.orcid.org with the subject line [ORCID] Your ORCID iD.

If the email says that we could not find an ORCID iD associated with the email address, then retry the process above with your other current email addresses (both personal and professional, past and present) to recover the ORCID iD. 

If none of your current email addresses are registered and you are not sure whether you have a 16-digit ORCID iD, then please try registering for a new ORCID iD. Our system will warn you if there is already an existing ORCID iD with your name which could possibly be yours.

If you are signed in to your ORCID account:

Your 16-digit ORCID iD is shown below your name in the top left hand corner when you are signed into your ORCID account:

Reset it on the sign in page by clicking "Forgot your password or ORCID ID?" or directly on our password reset page:

If you no longer have access to the email address previously associated with your ORCID record, for example, if you have changed institutions, and no longer have access to your old email address, you can still access your ORCID record. Please do NOT create a new record; instead follow the suggestions below to regain access to your existing ORCID record.

If you remember your ORCID password, you can use it to sign at https://orcid.org/signin using your previous email address or your 16-digit ORCID iD as the username. 

This is the quickest and easiest way to regain access.  Once you have accessed your record, be sure to update your email address by clicking the pencil icon next to the “Emails” section (see managing the email addresses associated with your ORCID record). 

If you don’t remember your ORCID password, please submit a support request from your current institutional or employer email address and we will help you regain access to your ORCID record. You will need to provide your ORCID iD (if known) and the email address(es) associated with your ORCID iD.

You can add and/or update email addresses associated with your ORCID account by clicking on the pencil icon  in the Emails section of your ORCID record at https://orcid.org/my-orcid

We highly recommend registering at least two email addresses to your account; for example, your institutional email address and personal email address. This will enable you to have multiple methods of signing into your ORCID account and ensure that you’re never locked out. Learn more at sign into ORCID.

You can perform other actions such as verifying or deleting an email address, or adding a new email address to the account:

• Primary Email
  Each account has one email set as the Primary Email. This is where ORCID will send your inbox notifications, if you have opted to receive them, as well as service announcements about your account. You can change your primary email address by clicking on Make primary email next to the email address you want to use.
  
  
• Verify Email
  The Resend verification email button will send an email message to its associated address with a link you can follow to verify that you have access to that email address.
  
  
• Delete Email
  If you want to delete an email address, click the delete icon (trash bin) next to that email address. Note: your primary email address cannot be deleted until you select another email address as your new primary email address.
  
  
• Visibility
  You can also control the visibility of each of your email addresses by using the visibility selector on the right hand side.
  
  
• Add New Email
  To add a new email address to your account, click in Add another email address, enter the desired email address and click the Save Changes button. A verification email will automatically be sent to that address. Learn more about verifying your email address.

The ORCID Registry is designed to discourage more than one account for an individual. We allow only one ORCID iD per email address, and we check for duplicates based on name when you register.  It works like this:

• If you attempt to register for a new ORCID iD with an email address that is already associated with an ORCID iD, you will be prompted to sign into the existing record.
• If your name already exists in our system, you will see a list of ORCID records with the same name as you. If you previously registered with ORCID,  you should click on that record to sign in, rather than creating a new account.
• If you have not used ORCID before, then none of the listed individuals are you, and you can click None of these are me - continue to registration.

Can I delete my duplicate ORCID iD?

Despite our controls in place, some users inadvertently register more than one ORCID iD.

Because ORCID identifiers are designed to be persistent, obsolete iDs will be deprecated, not completely deleted. Data on the deprecated account will be deleted, and the iD will point to the primary record, both in the user interface and the API. 

See Removing your additional or duplicate ORCID iD

Please note that this action will delete all information and permissions from the duplicate record (they cannot be transferred); only the email address(es) associated with it will be transferred to your primary record. Once a duplicate record has been removed, it cannot be reinstated.

Because ORCID identifiers are designed to be persistent, obsolete iDs will be deprecated, not completely deleted. Data on the deprecated account will be deleted, and the iD will point to your primary record, both in the user interface and the API. An example can be seen at https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6151-2200.

To deprecate your second record, start by logging into the in the primary account/iD you want to keep, go to Account settings, scroll down to Account actions and select Remove a duplicate record. 

Enter the sign-in details (email address or ORCID iD, and password) for the record you want to deprecate, then click Remove duplicate record. If you have forgotten the login details for your duplicate record, you can reset your password or contact us for help.

To confirm, click Remove duplicate record. If you have more than one record to deprecate, simply repeat this process for each additional record.

ORCID relies on individuals to report and remove duplicate records. If we receive a report from the community about a potential duplicate record or incorrect data which may need to be corrected, we will follow our dispute procedures to address the situation.

Are you looking for information about consolidating duplicate entries for publications? Learn more about grouped works.