You have full control over your ORCID profile, what it contains and what is publicly visible.
Once you have registered, the minimum information visible will be your name and your ORCID iD. However you can choose to make more information visible, such as your publications, education and employment history.
Your publication list will grow as ORCID locates articles from the sources you identify. You can also create a manual record for anything that might not be imported automatically, for example from publishers that have not yet integrated with ORCID.
The ORCID iD is a 16-digit number randomly assigned by the ORCID registry.
An example ORCID identifier would have the following structure: 0000-0001-5109-3700. It can be expressed as a URL like this: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5109-3700.
When applying for a grant or submitting an article for publication with a funder or publisher that has integrated with the ORCID registry. You can also add it to your CV, business cards or personal website.
If you are a student or new member of staff creating an ORCID iD you can populate your profile by importing a BibTeX file. ORCID can also import articles from CrossRef and other sources.
Your ORCID iD goes with you; it is not tied to a particular institution.
ORCID does not provide metrics or a reporting interface. Rather, ORCID is used a number of research metrics tools and providers to improve the accuracy of their data and reporting (i.e.: ImpactStory and SicenceOpen). It can also be connected to other research identifiers such as ResearcherID, Scopus Author ID, etc. to help generate your personal metrics profile.
The ORCID identifier structure is compatible with the ISO 277729 standard established by International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI). ISNI and ORCID are separate organizations that address different aspects of unambiguously identifying people and parties: ORCID is focused solely on the research community, while ISNI has a much broader application (it includes authors, patent holders, composers, institutions, musicians, even fictional characters). ISNI and ORCID use the same numbering system and are committed to interoperability. ORCID has a block of numbers reserved by ISNI so that there will never be operlap. More information: https://orcid.org/faq-page#n80.
Only one ORCID iD is allowed per email address, and there’s an auto-check for duplicates at the point of registration. If you have created duplicated accounts, you can consolidate all info into one and remove the other iD - in this case the old iD will keep referencing the new record. Visit this link for more information.