When you want your research to be visible and distinguishable, you as an author must be distinguishable.
Publishers face authorship issues on a daily basis. Who should be listed as an author? How can an author role be appropriately acknowledged? How can we discern author responsibility? Linked to this is conflict-of-interest reporting: who needs to report what, and in what context? For example, a perennial “pain point” for publishers is managing author databases, which for many journals are collections of duplicate records requiring ongoing investment to update and disambiguate. Accurate author databases are needed to understand an author’s history, perform accurate name-based searches, and find and manage reviewers. Another pain point is processing of metadata in the reference section of accepted publications; in the absence of author identifiers, these metadata require manual disambiguation to match authors with articles. ORCID provides a central registry of researchers that crosses disciplines, work places, sectors, and national boundaries. By supporting linkages across multiple datasets such a registry can become a switchboard for researchers and publishers alike in tracking and managing the dissemination of research findings.