2017 - All Press Releases

Springer Nature announces new ORCID initiatives

London, 28 April 2017

Springer Nature today announces two new 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 organizations 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 from today. This trial is the latest development in Springer Nature’s long history of support for ORCID, which has led to over 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 says: “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 said: "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. This feature will be extended to Springer’s Linked Open Data portal in the near future.

Springer publishes about 1,200 proceedings volumes every year, which represents a significant percentage of all such works published in technical fields worldwide. In computer science and engineering, publication in the proceedings of top conferences is, in fact, often preferred over publication in academic journals. 

Alfred Hofmann, Vice President, Computer Science Editorial, said: “With more than 10,000 volumes published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) and tens of thousands of authors each year, ORCID implementation is yet another step towards making proceedings metadata more transparent and open. Springer pioneered such efforts by launching the Linked Open Data portal and implementing ORCID. To the best of our knowledge, OCS is the first conference submission system that supports ORCID.”

In addition, from today Springer Nature will be the first major publisher to be awarded the Collect, Display, and Connect badges from ORCID’s integration and engagement program, Collect & Connect, developed to streamline the integration process and foster a shared user experience.

Springer Nature has implemented ORCID in workflows so that authors and editors benefit from all the advantages of ORCID.Submitted and authenticated ORCID iDs are displayed in the content (i.e., the PDF of a publication), on our platforms, and are added to our metadata to increase discoverability. This enables authors with an ORCID iD to authorise Crossref to automatically push information about their published work to their ORCID record.

In November 2015 Springer Nature announced that they would be the first publisher to enable all Springer and Palgrave Macmillan authors and editors to add their ORCID iDs to academic book and chapter manuscripts. 


Notes to editors:

Journals trialling the ORCID mandate will include: 

From Nature Research: Nature Astronomy; Nature Cell Biology; Nature Chemistry; Nature Climate Change; Nature Ecology & Evolution; Nature Genetics; Nature Human Behaviour; Nature Immunology; Nature Methods; Nature Microbiology; Nature Neuroscience; Nature Physics; Nature Plants; Nature Structural and Molecular Biology

From BioMed Central: BMC Evolutionary Biology; BMC Genetics; BMC Microbiology; BMC Neuroscience; BMC Veterinary Research; BMC Anesthesiology; BMC Cardiovascular Disorders; BMC Medical Genetics; BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making; BMC Women’s Health. 

From Springer: Comparative Clinical Pathology; Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology; Lung; Medical Oncology; Clinical and Experimental Medicine; Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics; European Archives of ORL; Neurosurgical Review; Clinical and translational Oncology; Neurological Sciences; Techniques in Coloproctology; Obesity Surgery; Journal of Molecular Neuroscience; Molecular Neurobiology; International Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management; Environmental Chemistry Letters; Reviews in Environmental Science and Bio-Technology; Agroforestry Systems; European Journal of Forest Research; Breast Cancer Research and Treatment; Journal of Neuro-Oncology

From SpringerOpen: Rice


For more information, contact:
Amy Bourke-Waite
Head of Communications, BioMed Central
Springer Nature
T: +44 (0)203 192 2102
M: +44 (0)7375 089 729 
E: amy.bourke-waite@biomedcentral.com

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9870-2796

About Springer Nature

Springer Nature advances discovery by publishing robust and insightful research, supporting the development of new areas of knowledge and making ideas and information accessible around the world. Key to this is our ability to provide the best possible service to the whole research community: helping authors to share their discoveries; enabling researchers to find, access and understand the work of others; supporting librarians and institutions with innovations in technology and data; providing quality publishing support to societies; and championing the issues that matter – standing up for science, leading the way on open access and being powerful advocates for the highest quality and ethical standards in research. As a research publisher, Springer Nature is home to trusted brands including Springer, Nature Research, BioMed Central, Palgrave Macmillan and Scientific American.