When a publisher allows you to use your ORCID iD while publishing, your ORCID iD becomes part of the metadata of the article, the book chapter, or the dataset. The ORCID iD is shown in the article and on the website of the publisher (the green ID button), and when the metadata from your article is send to other systems, they can use that ORCID iD as well. This is recognizing and distinguishing authors from the start!
Other author identifiers, like Scopus Author Identifier, ResearcherID or Google Scholar Profile are only used within that particular database (Scopus, Web of Science or Google Scholar) and only allow you to claim your publications after they are published.
The other author identifiers are not useless – you need them to make your publications easily found in Scopus and Google Scholar. We advise you to link the author identifiers you already use to your ORCID record.
