Resources for Editors of Scholarly Journals: OJS 3.3 Pro Tip: ORCID

An Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) is a unique series of numbers and letters assigned to a researcher. ORCIDs are especially useful for those researchers that have a commonly-used name. Connecting their ORCID to an article allows them to indicate that they are the author of the work, and not the person with the same name who is a respected researcher in another field. To learn more about this use of ORCID, please see this short YouTube video, What is ORCID?, that describes what ORCIDs are and how they are used.

ORCID can also, with the researcher's permission, maintain a list of that scholar's publications and display it on the ORCID website.  (The actual publication remains on the publisher's website; the citation information about the publication is what is maintained on the ORCID site.)  This list of publications collected on the ORCID site can then be used in many agencies' grant applications to quickly and easily populate the researcher's publication list in the application.  For scholars with many publications, this can save hours of typing. 

Why does ORCID matter?
In August 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) published new policy guidance for federal agencies that fund scholarly research, “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research” as an update to the 2013 “Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research” memorandum.   These federal agencies have until December 31, 2025 to submit their plan for compliance with the new policies.  

In the 2022 policy memo, page 6, section b) outlines the new requirement for authors of federally-funded research to supply researcher identifiers, i.e. a persistent identifier that is assigned to a researcher and is used to connect publications with the researcher.   ORCID is the most commonly used researcher identifier, and therefore, publishers are going to see much more demand from authors for support of ORCID in publishing systems after 2025.   Fortunately, OJS already supports use of ORCID with the publication of journal articles, so OJS journals can easily fill those requirements for authors.

To make it easier for researchers to add their publications to ORCID, OJS and other publication platforms have implemented processes that allow researchers to connect their ORCIDs with the articles that they author. The ORCID plugin in OJS sends an email to the author that makes it easy for them to give permission to OJS and to ORCID to share information about the publication. The end result is a link to the researcher's ORCID on the article page AND the addition of that article to the researcher's  list of publications in ORCID.

ORCID and OJS Submissions

The OJS ORCID plugin makes it easy for a researcher to connect their article to ORCID during the submission process.  This is the most efficient (and easiest!) way to add an ORCID to an article.  As long as a valid email is entered for each, every Contributor will be sent the email that starts this process.

Here's how an author can do this during submission: 

1. When filling out the Contributor information, submitters should watch for the ORCID section and make sure that Send e-mail to request ORCID authorization from contributor is checked for each Contributor.
2. An email will be sent to each contributor that supplied a valid email address, asking for their permission to add the article to their ORCID profile when it's published.
3. The researcher will click a link in the email, log in to ORCID, and grant that permission. 
4. When the article is published, ORCID information will be displayed on the article page, and the citation for that publication will be added to the researcher's ORCID profile.

Adding an ORCID After Submission

Sometimes, an author of an OJS article missed the opportunity to add an ORCID to their article at the time of submission.   Here's how an editor can add an ORCID for a contributor after submission. 

Adding an ORCID at any point after submission, but before publication:

1. Log in to OJS.
2. Search in the Submissions > All Active area for the submission.  You can search by author's name, article ID, or title keyword.
3. Once you locate the submission, click on the Publication tab and choose Contributors. 
4. Click the triangle next to the Contributor name and select Edit.
5. Verify that the email address is correct and update if necessary,
6. Scroll down to the ORCID section at the bottom of the resulting page and select the box next to Send e-mail to request ORCID authorization from contributor.
7. Click Save to save your changes.  That author will be sent the email asking for permission to connect the article to their ORCID profile. 
8. The author will click a link in the email, log in to ORCID, and grant that permission. 
9. Repeat as needed for any other Contributors to the article.

Adding an ORCID after publication:

1. Log in to OJS.
2. Search in the Submissions > Archives area for the submission.  You can search by author's name, article ID, or title keyword.
3. Once you locate the submission, you will have to unpublish the article before you can make any changes.  Click on the Publication tab and choose Unpublish.
4. Stay on the Publication tab and choose Contributors. 
5. Click the triangle next to the Contributor name and select Edit.
6. Verify that the email address is correct and update if necessary,
7. Scroll down to the ORCID section at the bottom of the resulting page and select the box next to Send e-mail to request ORCID authorization from contributor.
8. Click Save to save your changes.  That author will be sent the email asking for permission to connect the article to their ORCID profile. 
9. The author will click a link in the email, log in to ORCID, and grant that permission. 
10. Repeat as needed for any other Contributors to the article.
11. Click Schedule for Publication to publish the article again.