The ORCID identifier is increasingly being used by publishers and other intitutions to identify researchers and measure their individual scientific achievement. Several publishers require authors to use an ORCID id when they want to publish.
ORCID is an effort of the scholarly publishing community to create unique identifiers for scientists and let them create a complete overview of their scientific career including publication list and use it to identify themselves to publishers and funders. The profile owner has complete control which information is displayed to trusted users, and which part is completely public.
Because of its growing importance, we recommend that you create an ORCID id.
To create a profile at ORCID, go to: https://orcid.org/register