With scholarly publishing becoming increasingly diversified and mostly happening online, managing your scholarly reputation has become more challenging.
“Proactively managing your scholarly reputation allows you to take more control of your online presence by sharing information that is most important to you, providing important context and information about your research and publications, and ensuring that scholarship is shared with the audiences that will be the most impacted,” said Christina Miskey, scholarly communication librarian for research infrastructure. “Managing your reputation also increases the impact and reach of your research, raises the profile of your college or department, and increases the national reputation of UNLV,”
Miskey connects UNLV faculty and graduate students with tools and resources that can help with reputation management and aid in scholarly publishing. One such tool, ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier), is required by the Office of Sponsored Programs as part of internal routing for research funding, and is often required by national funding agencies as part of the submission process. Here Miskey discusses how ORCID is being used at UNLV, the benefits of an ORCID iD, and how the Libraries can assist with scholarly reputation management.
What is ORCID?
ORCID is a persistent, free, and non-proprietary ID that researchers, creators, and contributors of all kinds can use. An ORCID iD can follow researchers throughout their career, and works to improve the visibility and attribution of scholarly, creative, and even entrepreneurial activities.
How can UNLV researchers use ORCID?
All researchers can use ORCID to disambiguate themselves from other researchers with the same or similar names, and to connect their publications together if they ever change their name. At UNLV specifically, researchers can connect their ORCID iD to their ACE account if they choose, and faculty members can connect their ORCID accounts to UNLVFolio to import their publications for their Faculty Annual Achievement Report and to Pivot to enhance profiles when searching for potential grant opportunities.
How do you support researchers using ORCID?
I offer workshops during the fall and spring semesters to introduce researchers to all of the features of ORCID, am available for consultations with researchers to create or enhance their current ORCID records, and we have several online resources, such as the ORCID@UNLV guide, for researchers to take advantage of. I also work with our Office of Faculty Affairs to educate, troubleshoot, and provide assistance for faculty members working with our ORCID and UNLVFolio integration.
How does ORCID track all your publications and citations?
ORCID can be used to track a wide variety of works, including scholarly publications, intellectual property, conference presentations, artistic performances, data management plans, and much more. Researchers can also use their ORCID records to track grants they have received, invited positions or other distinctions they have held, educational and employment history, and service opportunities.
What do you find most useful about using ORCID personally?
I like all of the different ways ORCID connects to other systems, which helps make it easier for me to track my publications, sometimes automatically. I have my ORCID account connected to Scopus, for example, and a recent publication was automatically added to my record within a few days after it was published.
How does ORCID tie into UNLV’s R1 status?
ORCID, overall, helps UNLV researchers increase the visibility and impact of their research, which helps to increase UNLV’s research profile and reputation. Major funders such as the National Institutes for Health and the National Science Foundation require ORCID iDs for grant applications, and more and more publishers are requiring ORCID iDs as part of the publication process, so having a current ORCID record helps UNLV’s researchers to apply for important funding of projects, and publish in high profile journals.
What are some of the other ways you support researchers at UNLV?
I work with researchers to find ways to increase the impact and reach of their research, generally using things like metrics, citations, social media or professional networking, and more. During the fall semester, I will be teaching two workshops in partnership with the Graduate College — one that focuses on showing newly published graduate students how to locate citations, metrics, and more for their research and one that introduces them to ORCID.
For faculty, I will be hosting our first 5-Day Research Impact Challenge, where they can complete one challenge each day to improve their research’s impact. I also collaborate with our data librarian and sciences librarian to teach a rotating series of workshops on research data management, and this fall we will have workshops focusing on reproducible research, reproducible coding, and data management plans.
