Springer Nature initatives support ORCID

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Springer Nature has launched two initiatives in support of ORCID, which gives researchers a unique, personal, persistent identifier (an iD) that distinguishes them from every other researcher.

ORCID also enables organisations to link researchers’ affiliations and works – including their publications – to their iD, ensuring they receive proper credit for their work.

The first initiative is a trial that will mandate ORCID iDs for corresponding authors publishing in 46 journals from across the whole of Springer Nature, including Nature Research, Springer and BioMed Central. This trial is the latest development in Springer Nature’s long history of support for ORCID, which has led to more than 500,000 unique identifiers being used across the portfolio.

The trial will last for six months and researchers’ perceptions will be evaluated at the end of that period.

Alison Mitchell, chief publishing advisor at Springer Nature, explained: 'We want our authors to share their discoveries and receive proper credit for doing so.

Hundreds of thousands of our authors already support ORCID, and our technical systems are already very well integrated, but we hope that the upcoming trial will go further to ensure that even more academics sign up for ORCID and get recognition for their work. We are very proud of the growth of ORCID, an organisation we helped to set up back in 2010.'

Laurel L. Haak, executive director at ORCID, added: 'Springer Nature was an early adopter of ORCID, providing the publishing community a clear example of best practice in collecting ORCID iDs and passing them through manuscript submission and production processes.  Springer Nature's new initiatives signify their long-standing commitment to supporting the adoption of ORCID and use of implementation standards to streamline the user experience.'

The second initiative will see Springer become the first publisher to include ORCID iDs in proceedings papers. Springer’s proceedings submission system, OCS, allows authors to enter and validate their ORCID iDs, thus integrating them into the workflow process from the very beginning. Authors and editors of proceedings that use other conference management systems can still provide ORCID iDs to appear in the proceedings and next to the editors’ information.