TMU Libraries is reaching out to encourage faculty, researchers and graduate students to create an ORCID account or affiliate a current account with the university.
Why the push? While accounts reflect the depth of research conducted at TMU, ORCID iDs are increasingly required by funding agencies. Plus, they help your research get noticed!
Q & A with Research Impact Librarian, Toby Malone
What is ORCID?
An ORCID iD is a unique identifier that distinguishes you and your work from other researchers. It allows researchers, faculty and graduate students to highlight and control access to their data, research, grants and collaborations.
Why create or affiliate an ORCID account with TMU?
ORCID is becoming the industry standard for profiling academic research. It allows researchers to list their affiliations, publications, and grants. Many funding agencies are starting to require ORCID iDs be included in grant applications. In Europe this has long been a standard.
At the Libraries, we are working hard to ensure TMU researchers are properly affiliated with the university so we can celebrate their achievements and research impact–an ORCID profile makes this much easier.
ORCID is excellent for distinguishing researchers with similar names and ensuring everyone is easily identified in the academic community.
The Libraries have also incorporated ORCID’s Affiliation Manager tool, making it seamless for established accounts to connect with TMU. The ease of using this tool has resulted in a 75% affiliation rate on campus–an increase from 25% in 2024!
How does having an account connected to TMU help a researcher, faculty member, grad student?
A major factor in every researcher’s career lies in Knowledge Mobilisation, or the way a researcher’s work is published, read, shared, and cited. ORCID provides an official platform to showcase research with an institutional affiliation that reassures readers as to their veracity.
An ORCID profile travels with you, through changes in positions, institutions, and names, and is a persistent identifier, which differentiates you in a crowded academic landscape.
Does it help with funding, tenure, professional advancement, and research collaborations?
Being able to showcase academic work in a centralised location is crucial to the visibility of an academic profile. Visibility leads to greater success in discovering future opportunities, or having opportunities find you.
The stronger a faculty member’s academic profile, the stronger their influence.
Do ORCID profile affiliations help the University?
ORCID profile uptake is a notable tenet in TMU’s ongoing effort to improve in the world university rankings. The greater the ORCID uptake, the stronger the faculty group presents to the wider academic community, which has a generative effect for future collaborations, presentations, and publications. Our goal is to achieve full uptake of ORCID across campus.
Are ORCID accounts required?
It is not required, but it is strongly recommended as a means of showcasing faculty work and by extension the university’s productivity.
If there are concerns about time management, TMU Librarians are available to work with faculty members to set up and automate their accounts.
Do (or, will) ORCID accounts help generate national, international attention for research?
The universality of ORCID in most academic communities means that this has become an expected standard when it comes to applications, presentations, and granting processes. As such, ORCID is becoming an increasingly important forum for showcasing academic excellence, and absence from that environment risks missing major opportunities. Having a robust, complete, and exhaustive ORCID account ensures our faculty members are presenting themselves in as strong a fashion as possible, as we look to build on collaborations and other international opportunities.
For more information on ORCID iDs and to sign up, visit the Libraries’ ORCID research guide.
Fill out the addition request form for the Affiliation Manager.