Guidance for ORCID reviewer recognition

The benefits of ORCID review records

Due to the anonymity and confidentiality of the UKRI review process, the contribution of our reviewers is not formally recognised. ORCID reviewer recognition provides a visible and verifiable way for UKRI to publicly acknowledge reviewers’ contributions, without compromising the confidentiality and anonymity of the review process.

ORCID reviewer recognition can help you keep track of the number of reviews that you have carried out for UKRI over time, which will be useful when applying for a promotion and funding.

ORCID reviewer recognition will be implemented in Je-S after 23 November 2020, and review credits will only be available for reviews completed after this date.

Linking ORCID and Je-S accounts

UKRI is an ORCID member organisation through the UK ORCID Consortium. We have implemented the ORCID API (application programming interface) so you can link your ORCID profile to your Je-S account by adding your ORCID identifier (iD) to your personal information in the Je-S profile. New applicants will also see the option to “create or connect your ORCID iD” when creating a new Je-S account.

If you currently don’t have an ORCID iD, you can also sign up for one from the Je-S system, or via the ORCID website. The basic registration takes about a minute, including adding your ORCID iD to your Je-S account at the same time.

Reconnecting Je-S and ORCID accounts

If you have linked your ORCID iD to your Je-S account before August 2017, you will need to reconnect your ORCID iD with your Je-S account to receive ORCID review credits. This is because ORCID has updated their API since August 2017, and prior account linking does not include the permission of adding review credit onto your ORCID record.

If you wish to reconnect the accounts and receive ORCID review credits, you will need to:

  1. Email JeSHelp@je-s.ukri.org requesting UKRI to remove your ORCID information from your Je-S account.
  2. Once this action is complete, we will send you a confirmation by email.
  3. You will then need to log in to your Je-S account and click on “Personal Information” from the left-hand navigation.
  4. You will then see a link to “Create or connect your ORCID identifier”.
  5. Click on this link and complete the sign-up process with ORCID.
  6. Once completed, you will see your ORCID identifier listed under your “Personal Information”.

Data protection and permissions

UKRI controls any information that the UKRI system sends to the ORCID profile of Je-S users. We process this information on your behalf based on your consent. You decide whether to grant or deny permission to UKRI through your Je-S account. UKRI will only send ORCID review credits to those reviewers who have explicitly granted permissions in the Je-S profile.

You can change your permission at any time by going to your ‘ORCID consent control’ page accessed via Je-S on the left hand navigation menu under your account. However, credit for reviews carried out while permission was denied can’t be added later on.

If you wish to remove the UKRI review record you can do this in two ways:

  • delete review records from your ORCID profile instantly by clicking on the delete icon next to the review record
  • request UKRI to remove your ORCID record by emailing the Je-S helpdesk at JeSHelp@je-s.ukri.org. It may take up to 30 working days to process your request and delete the data from your ORCID profile.

As well as being able to control what information is added and deleted from your ORCID record, you can control the visibility of the information.

See ORCID guidance for more information on editing records and visibility settings.

All personal data provided to UKRI in connection to the assessment of applications will be processed in accordance with current UK data protection legislation and the EU General Data Protection Regulations 2016/679 (GDPR) where appropriate.

Further information on how we use personal data, and how you can exercise your rights as a data subject, can be found in the UKRI privacy notice.

How do I ensure my review is deemed ‘usable’?

ORCID reviewer recognition requires that the review is categorised as ‘usable’. UKRI uses the following indicators to decide whether a review submitted via Je-S is usable:

  • The reviewer provides the necessary information to help UKRI staff and panel members to make an informed judgement – leaving no assessment section blank unless they are outside the reviewer’s area of expertise.
  • The reviewer’s comments are based on the application information for fairness and should be aligned with UKRI’s principles for equality, diversity and inclusion. For example, plans to work part-time or past periods of absence for health reasons are not a reason to penalise an application.
  • Comments are not speculative, inflammatory or an attempt to damage the applicant.
  • Following the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment principles, the review does not use journal-based metrics (such as journal impact factors or any hierarchy of journals), conference rankings or metrics such as the H-index or i10-index as a surrogate measure of a research article’s quality, in assessing the investigator’s contributions.
  • The reviewer has no conflict of interest with the application.
  • As a rule, applications submitted to UKRI are assessed using partial anonymity, and the reviewer should not reveal their identity in the review.

In exceptional circumstances, if any of the above criteria is not met, UKRI staff may ask reviewers to amend their review.

A review is usually categorised as ‘unusable’ due to one or more of the following reasons:

  • any of the above criteria have not been met
  • a conflict of interest has become apparent after the submission of the review
  • not enough information has been provided to support the score
  • the review has been returned to the reviewer for amendments and the reviewer has not made these amendments.

Receiving review credits

The UKRI system will send review credits to ORCID profiles six times a year:

  • 23 January
  • 23 March
  • 23 May
  • 23 July
  • 23 September
  • 23 November.

If the system is being updated on these dates, ORCID review credits will be sent in the next available date.

It may take up to six months after you submit your review for you to receive an ORCID review credit.

If you have submitted a review via Je-S but have not received an ORCID review credit six months after the review submission, it could be due to one of the following reasons:

  • you submitted your review before 23 November 2020
  • at the time of review submission, you have not updated your Je-S account to give UKRI the permission to send review information to your ORCID account
  • your review was not classified as a ‘usable review’.

Am I eligible for review credits?

If you have carried out a review for UKRI (including reviews for NC3Rs) and submitted the review through Je-S, you are eligible to receive ORCID review credits, provided you meet the listed criteria and give the right permission to allow UKRI to send review credits to your ORCID profile. The information on the ORCID review credit will indicate that the review was carried out for UK Research and Innovation and not a specific UKRI council or funding programme.

Due to technical reasons the ORCID reviewer recognition is currently only available for reviews that are submitted through Je-S, and don’t apply to reviews outside of Je-S. We will review the benefits of widening this feature to the applications submitted to Innovate UK in the future.

Currently the ORCID reviewer recognition does not cover review credits for panel assessments. UKRI councils already acknowledge and provide recognition to panellists’ contribution through publication via their websites.

Last updated: 27 June 2022

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