hiwiki:ORCID
This page is about the use of ORCID (the Open Researcher and Contributor ID) in Wikipedia.
ORCID is a form of authority control – that's nothing to do with authoritarianism, it's a term borrowed from library cataloguing.
An ORCID allows us to determine that the Jim Smith who wrote paper A is the same Jim Smith who wrote paper B, and James T. Smith who wrote paper C, but not the Jim Smith who wrote paper D. It also allows us to determine that Jim Smith-Jones is the same author, after a name change, say on marriage or divorce.
There are three ways we can use ORCID in Wikipedia:
- In articles about people
- On user pages
- In citations
Articles about people
We use a number of types of authority control identifiers in Wikipedia. These include VIAF, and, of course, ORCID. For more general details, see Wikipedia:Authority control.
You can see examples of articles with ORCID identifiers, in Category:Wikipedia articles with ORCID identifiers.
There are two ways to add ORCIDs to articles.
Simple method
If the person you are writing about has an ORCID identifier (you might find it in their profile on their employer's website, for instance, or included in a work they've authored; it may look like http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5882-6823 or
just ORCID: 0000-0001-5882-6823), the simplest way to add it is to use the {{Authority control}} template, like this:
{{Authority control|ORCID=0000-0001-5882-6823}}
If there is already another value on the page:
{{Authority control|VIAF=70042340}}
you can add the ORCID parameter, like this:
{{Authority control|VIAF=70042340|ORCID=0000-0001-5882-6823}}
(For other-language Wikipedias, see #Template in other languages.)
Better method: Wikidata
A better method is to add the ORCID to the Wikidata entry about the person, using P496. See screenshot. (You can do the same with VIAF and other values.)
Then, put {{Authority control}} on the page, with no parameters. The value will magically be included in the article, from Wikidata.
An article about you
If there is a Wikipedia article about you, you can mention that in the text part of the biography on your ORCID profile. Eventually, ORCID may add a parameter specially for this (and/ or for the Wikidata equivalent).
Please do not create a Wikipedia article about yourself - here's why.
User pages
Individual Wikipedia editors can register for an ORCID, free, on the ORCID website. The process only takes a few seconds.
This applies to all editors, but will be especially useful for those who also publish in scientific journals or other academic works, and/ or those who edit articles about matters related to their academic work or research.
Because there are no Wikidata entries for (most) Wikipedia editors, you can't use the Wikidata method shown above to put your ORCID on your user page. Instead, use the simple method:
{{Authority control|ORCID=0000-0001-5882-6823}}
You can see examples of user pages with ORCID identifiers, in Category:User pages with ORCID identifiers.
The same method can be used for your user pages on the Simple English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Wikibooks (en), Wikiquote (en) and Wikisource (en, fr, po, uk). A similar method is used on several Wikipedias in other languages (though the template name varies; see #Template in other languages).
Your ORCID profile
Once you have an ORCID, and a Wikipedia account, you can use your ORCID profile to tell the world about your work on Wikipedia. Eventually ORCID will have a parameter where you can enter your cross-project user name. Until then, you can add your Special:Contributions URL as a "work", and/ or list your userpage's URL as one of your websites. You can, of course, also do the same of any sister projects on which you are active. An example is http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5882-6823
Citations
We don't yet include ORCIDs for people whose work we cite, but we could do.
If we do that, we could create pages like this mockup, showing all the pages on which an author is cited.
Previous discussion is archived at: Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 5#ORCID, redux.
Questions?
If you have questions, use this page's talk page, or contact Andy Mabbett, the Wikipedian-in-Residence with ORCID, who will be happy to help.
Template in other languages
ORCID is available in the equivalent of the "Authority control" template in these languages:
Further reading
- a May 2014 poster about ORCID and Wikipedia presented at the ORCID outreach meeting in Chicago.
- Announcing ORCID's Wikipedian-in-Residence
See also
- Category:Wikipedia articles with faulty authority control identifiers (ORCID) - error-tracking category - should be empty!