Last August I attended the International Academy of Nurse Editors (INANE) meeting in London, U.K. I always learn so much at these meetings and enjoy interacting with editors of nursing journals from around the world. The 2016 meeting was held at the Royal College of Nursing, now celebrating their 100-year anniversary. A prominent presentation covered ORCID (2011), a digital unique ID for writers and researchers offered by a nonprofit organization with many partner members, including publishers, professional organizations, funding agencies, libraries, and universities. Advantages of ORCID are that it accurately links your name with all of your clinical, research, and publication activities including articles written, grant applications, positions held, and affiliations. Researchers control their own record and determine what information is connected to their ORCID ID. It solves the issue that many women researchers encounter when they change names.

The ORCID ID can help to avoid mistaken identity and confusion with other researchers with similar names or even the same name. For example, in the PubMed database, there are three other researchers with the same first and middle initials and same last name that I have, so entering K. R. Simpson will generate a list that includes five articles that I have not written, that were instead written by Kingsley R. Simpson, Karen R. Simpson, and Kurt R. Simpson. If I eliminate my middle initial, there are quite a few other researchers including my daughter K. E. Simpson, a pediatric cardiologist with a number of publications, who shares those initials and last name with one other researcher in PubMed who generally writes articles about surgery on cats. Things can get very confusing, especially if the others sharing your initials and last name are quite prolific and write about similar topics. Fortunately for me, the three other researchers listed as K. R. Simpson have written about dermatology, radiology, and biochemistry, none of which are topics within my area of expertise or publication history.

Getting an ORCID ID is free and it is easy to use. Once you register at http://orcid.org/, and get your ORCID ID, you can begin the process of identifying your work and linking it to your ORCID ID. Various databases are available on their Web site for you to scroll through; when you see an article that you have written, click to add it to your ORCID dataset. I noticed a number of the editors attending the INANE meeting accomplishing this on their smart phones immediately after the presentation. I used a PC so I could view a larger screen, but can personally attest to ORCID's ease of use. ORCID is supported by MCN and our publisher Wolters Kluwer. When you log on the MCN site for article submission or review at http://www.editorialmanager.com/mcn/default.aspx, you will notice the opportunity to use an ORCID ID. Consider getting this unique identifier to distinguish yourself! This would be proactive because I imagine in the future, ORCID will be required for researchers by most publishers, universities, and grant agencies.

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