At ORCID, we value helping researchers distinguish themselves and claim credit for their work while controlling access to their data—no matter how many people share the same or similar name. Our approach to letting researchers control who can view and write data to their record is a Founding Principle that guides our activities. In fact, we believe one of the reasons why we have nearly 15 million users is because of the trust we've engendered by researchers to participate in the registry.
It's important to know that there are three visibility settings—Everyone, Trusted Organizations, and Only me—and you can change these settings at any time. You can set default settings, as in the image above, so that each time you add an item or an item is added to your record on your behalf, it automatically defaults to this visibility setting. Alternately you can customize the visibility setting of each item in your record, right from the UI.
Everyone: If discoverability is important to you in your work, check to see that your data is visible to Everyone. This will ensure your data is visible on the public version of your record, and that your record is returned in searches for a particular keyword.
Trusted Organizations: Limited-access information that can be seen by any trusted parties whom you have granted access to your ORCID record. These can include Trusted Organizations to whom you have granted permission to read from and write from your record, and Trusted Individuals, to whom you have granted permission to manage your record on your behalf.
Only me: Private information that can only be seen by you and Trusted Individuals you have granted access to help administer your ORCID record on your behalf. It is also used by ORCID algorithms to help distinguish your identity from another person who may have a similar name, be in a similar field, or may be confused with you for other reasons. This information is not shared with others.
We invite you to do a visibility check on your record. Are are visibility settings what you intend? Use this tutorial to find out. More support issues can be found at http://support.orcid.org.
