By Shelley E. Barba, Digital Scholarship Librarian, TTU Libraries Scholarly Publishing Team Member
Summer technically starts on June 21st; although, for many academics the beginning of summer starts the second grades from spring are turned in. With the freedom from teaching courses, the summer is ripe with potential and promise. There will be so much time to focus on all of the things that fall by the way-side during fall and spring: clearing out email, travel, reading for pleasure and profit, cleaning out the office, research, and maybe even spending time with loved ones. Somehow though, these few months slip away and not everything on the to-do list gets done before the back-to-school sales begin.
I loathe adding to your summer agenda, but the hot days are perfect for sitting with a cool drink and addressing one easy task to get your digital scholarship headed in a good direction. Setting up an ORCID id is the simple thing you can do that will allow you to distinguish yourself from other researchers and have a digital curriculum vitae at the ready.
At the very basic level, it only takes one minute to set it up. Invest a half hour and you’ll be well on your way to reaping great benefits, especially if you continue to flesh it out more whenever you have a few minutes to spare.
ORCID is a non-profit organization, and researchers in all areas of study from all over the world have registered for an unique identifier. You can add as much or as little as you would like to your online profile including your biography, education, employment, funding, works, and other researcher IDs. You can also decide how much you would like made public.
To get started, go to www.orcid.org, and follow the instructions for researchers. It is incredibly quick to set up then it is up to you to add information about yourself. The good news is if you enter your other researcher IDs, it will automatically pull those citations into your record. There is work now to have it sync with other online profiles such as Digital Measures, so you would only have to make update in one place.
If you are ahead of the curve and already have an ORCID id, take a moment to see if it is up-to-date. You may need to add an awarded grant or publication you had this past school year.
The good news is that if the summer days pass without getting around to claiming an ORCID id, it is so quick and simple; you could do it in the fall during a lull in a faculty meeting.
Like any scholarship and research you do, you do not have to do it all at once; all you have to do is start.
Scholarly Publishing in Raiderland 