Virginia Tech ORCID Requirement for Faculty
Virginia Tech is requesting that faculty connect their public ORCID iD to their Elements profile.
This request comes from the Office of Research and Innovation, in collaboration with the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost and the University Libraries. This is a one-time administrative step intended to support research integrity, attribution, and compliance with sponsor requirements.
Who does this apply to?
Any faculty member who publishes or applies for externally funded research.
How do you fulfill this requirement?
These steps below ensure your scholarly record is accurate, complete, and compliant with federal requirements. It should take about 10 minutes to complete the required steps if you have not completed any of them.
After the initial setup is complete, no additional action is required.
Required steps:
- Ensure you have a public ORCID iD
- Import scholarly works into ORCID via Scopus
- Connect your ORCID iD to Elements
Recommended but optional steps:
Email us questions or for support: orcid@vt.edu
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Federal research agencies now require researchers to use a digital persistent identifier (DPI)—such as an ORCID iD—to clearly and consistently identify who produced funded research.
Key federal requirements include:
-
NSPM-33 (January 2022):
Federal agencies must require researchers supported by federal grants to be registered with a service that provides a digital persistent identifier. -
OSTP Public Access Policy (Nelson Memo, August 25, 2022):
Federally funded researchers must include a compliant DPI in published research outputs and provide agencies with associated metadata
--> Browse and find publication and data sharing policies by agency
ORCID is the DPI that meets these requirements.
Connecting ORCID to Scopus allows your publications to automatically flow into ORCID, and from there into Elements. This helps:
- Keep your publication record up to date with minimal effort
- Prevent misattribution of your work
- Protect you from improper or inaccurate authorship claims
Benefits for researchers
- Saves time when preparing proposals (e.g., Biosketch)
- Reduces repetitive data entry across systems
- Improves accuracy of publication and funding records
- Strengthens research security and proper attribution
- Supports institutional and funder reporting with less faculty burden
ORCID alone does not provide a reliable way for Virginia Tech to confirm ORCID registration or institutional affiliation due to name ambiguity and inconsistent employer data.
Elements serves as the university’s trusted system of record, allowing Virginia Tech to:
- Verify ORCID connections
- Track compliance
- Reduce duplicate reporting requests to faculty
Currently, about half of actively publishing faculty have already connected their ORCID iD in Elements.
