Five Reasons to Validate Your Reviews with ORCID

Author: Penny Freedman

In May we rolled out an initiative that offers all peer reviewers of Springer Nature journals that utilize the Editorial Manager system the option to add their review contribution to their ORCID records. This encompasses most of our Springer, Palgrave, and BMC brand journals.

ORCID is a non-profit organization that provides researchers with a unique digital identifier. When using an ORCID iD you ensure all your work is appropriately credited to you. Many researchers share the same name, or publish under different names throughout the span of their career. With an ORCID iD, you are consistently and correctly associated with your research work, which includes your peer review activity.

Following a review submission in Editorial Manager, you will be prompted with a message that asks if we may update your ORCID record with the review. For blind peer reviews very limited information is sent to your ORCID record. It will not be possible to identify which article(s) were reviewed, but, at a minimum, the date and type of review activity will be recorded. As of August 2019, 34% of reviewers presented with the option to allow us to verify their reviews have chosen to accept it.

We asked Alice Meadows, the Director of Communications at ORCID, to share the top five reasons you should be verifying your reviews on your ORCID record.

1. You’ll get the recognition you deserve for your peer review contributions, both individual reviews and your review service over time
2. It’s a comprehensive and effective way to keep track of which journals, panels, and organizations you have reviewed for. This is extremely helpful when it comes time to update a CV, apply for a promotion, tenure, grant, etc.
3. You’ll be able to easily see the sources of peer review information on your record (typically the organizations you reviewed for or their agents)
4. You’ll increase the discoverability of your open peer reviews when you connect the report DOI to your ORCID record -- and showcase your commitment to open peer review!
5. You get to decide who can see information about your review activities and service - everyone, trusted organizations (ORCID members), or only you. You can change the visibility settings for each review at any time after it’s been added to your record 

Learn more about our partnership, and how else we integrate ORCID at Springer Nature. Let us know in the comments if you've already begun to validate your reviews!