FAQ+A

Does the library track ORCIDs?


Answer

This seems like a simple question but the answer is complicated. The short answer is no. 

The long answer: 

ORCID launched its registry service, and the Arnold Library registered Fred Hutch as an ORCID participant institution, in 2012, and upgraded to ORCID's basic membership, as as an early adopter, in 2013.

In accordance with the ORCID API and terms of use at that time, the Library batch assigned ORCIDs for all Fred Hutch faculty and other known Fred Hutch authors in 2013. ORCID discontinued batch creation in 2014, but the Library continued creating accounts for researchers by request through Fall 2015.

In early 2016, ORCID updated their terms of use to discontinue creation of ORCIDs by member institutions on behalf of their researchers, and the Library stopped creating ORCIDs at that time.

The Library has maintained a list of ORCIDs we created early in our ORCID membership while we were allowed to do so, but we can't guarantee that those IDs were claimed by the researchers using the protocols in effect at the time, and researchers may have created their own accounts in the meantime of which we are unaware. 

ORCID recommends that institutional members develop mechanisms to allow researchers and other employees to use their institutional credentials to definitively identify themselves when creating an ORCID account, and to capture the resulting iD back to our institutional systems of record. The Library is working with Fred Hutch leadership and stakeholders to explore how to accomplish this. 

In the meantime, if you need help identifying whether an ORCID may have been created for yourself or a researcher you support, we have a related FAQ (link below) to guide you through that process. 

  • Last Updated Oct 07, 2019
  • Views 30
  • Answered By Beth Levine

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