On July 10th, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that they will require anyone receiving an award to register for a free ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifiers) id starting in FY 2020. ORCID ids are unique, persistent, identifiers that distinguish one researcher from another. They are used to link individual researchers with their professional activities and persist across changes in name, location, and institutional affiliation. For more information about this requirement, please see the press release from the NIH, AHRQ, and CDC.

Signing up for an ORCID is very easy to do. Simply, go to https://orcid.org/, click on the Register Now link, and follow the instructions. However, if you need assistance with registering or have additional questions about ORCIDs, such as how to use them effectively, please feel free to contact a librarian at Dana Medical Library for assistance.