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DiVA is the Swedish research-publication and student-thesis portal. Searching it, registering a publication in it, and connecting your record to an ORCID iD are three separate tasks, and the labels you see depend on which university’s local DiVA you use. This guide covers each task.
What DiVA is
DiVA stands for Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet (Digital Scientific Archive). The official portal describes itself as a finding tool for research publications and student theses. Each entry carries bibliographic information, and many also include an abstract and a link to the full text.
The portal brings together records from a large group of Swedish universities, university colleges and research institutes. Uppsala University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology are among them. The participating list changes over time, so use the portal’s “About DiVA” page for the current membership rather than relying on a fixed count.
Two points shape how you work with it:
- Each organisation has its own local DiVA. Umeå University Library explains that every Swedish organisation has a local version, and a central portal retrieves data from those local databases.
- Records belong to the institution that registered them. The portal states that publications are published and registered at the university or college of origin, so a question about a specific record goes to that institution.
Umeå describes its own DiVA as the university’s publication database and archive for both research publications and theses. That wording matters for the next section: DiVA is both a register of what was published and, where full text is attached, an archive.
Who must or should register
Whether you must register is set by your own institution, not by the portal. At Umeå University, registration is mandatory for employees for publications produced while employed there. Other institutions set their own rules, so check your library’s DiVA page or ask your department administrator.
Registration is done by the researcher or by an administrator at the department. At Uppsala University, publications indexed in Web of Science are imported weekly by the Library. Anything else needs to be added to DiVA by the researchers themselves or by administrators at the departments. Importing does not cover everything, so check your list rather than assuming it is complete.
How to search and register
Searching
Use the search on the central DiVA portal to find publications and theses across participating organisations. If you are looking for a specific record to cite or correct, the portal directs you to the originating institution for questions about it.
Registering a publication
The steps below follow the Uppsala University Library guide. Menu labels belong to Uppsala’s local instance and may differ at your institution.
- Search first. Look for the publication by title. If a record already exists, edit it instead of creating a new one.
- Log in to your institution’s DiVA.
- Choose Add publication / Upload files.
- Select the publication type and click Continue.
- Choose Enter information and fill in the record. You can optionally upload files.
- Go to Review / Publish and click Submit.
Use Cancel / Save draft to stop partway; the unfinished record goes to My drafts.
Shortcut for articles with a DOI. Choose Article in journal or Article, review/survey, enter the DOI under Get information with DOI-number, and click Fetch. The form is filled from the DOI, and you then check it. The Edit / Delete record function also lets you copy an existing record as a starting point.
What the record contains and how it is used
A DiVA record holds the bibliographic information for the publication or thesis and, where available, an abstract and a full-text link. The record also links to people and organisations through authority records and an affiliation choice.
At Uppsala, the author step offers Connect authority record for each author, with the instruction to select the correct authority record. For affiliation you pick Choose organisation, or Other organisation if the author belongs elsewhere. There is also a Local User Id field, filled from the staff catalogue.
Umeå University Library says registered publications are used for bibliometric evaluations, visualisations and analyses of scientific output, and that they appear on personal pages and in publication lists. For an overview of what such analyses involve, see our bibliometric analysis workflow guide.
For the national publication database that sits alongside institutional repositories, see our guide to SwePub, Sweden’s national publication database.
Connecting DiVA to ORCID and other identifiers
Uppsala’s guide says that if an Uppsala author has an ORCID iD, it can be added in the appropriate field of the record. Umeå adds that publications are easy to import from external databases into DiVA and to export from DiVA to your ORCID profile.
In practice:
- Add your ORCID iD to your author information when you register, so the record is tied to you and not just to a name string. Our ORCID iD definition and the guide on registering and finding ORCID iDs cover the identifier itself.
- If you want your DiVA publications visible on your ORCID record, follow the export route your library describes, then review the result. Our guide on adding publications to ORCID explains the general options.
- For a Scopus Author ID, see our guide to linking a Scopus Author ID to ORCID for how to connect it to your ORCID record.
Common problems
- Duplicate records. Always search by title before adding. Editing an existing record avoids a second entry for the same publication.
- Assuming an automatic import is complete. The weekly Web of Science import at Uppsala only covers indexed items; other publications must be added by the researcher or a department administrator.
- Wrong authority record. The guide’s own warning is to select the correct authority record for each author. Check each author before you submit.
- Menu labels that do not match this guide. The steps above come from Uppsala’s instance. If your institution’s local DiVA labels things differently, follow your library’s own instructions.
- Fixing someone else’s record. The record belongs to the institution that registered it, so contact that institution rather than the central portal.
Frequently asked questions
What does DiVA stand for?
Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet, the Digital Scientific Archive. The portal is a finding tool for research publications and student theses.
Is DiVA only for researchers?
No. The portal covers student theses as well as research publications.
Do I have to register my publications in DiVA?
It depends on your institution. Umeå University, for example, makes registration mandatory for its employees for publications produced during employment. Check your own library’s rules.
Can I add a publication from its DOI?
Yes, in the Uppsala instance: for journal articles and review articles, enter the DOI under “Get information with DOI-number” and click “Fetch”.
Can I link DiVA to my ORCID profile?
You can add an ORCID iD to the author information in a record, and Umeå University Library states that publications can be exported from DiVA to an ORCID profile.
Where do I ask about a specific DiVA record?
The portal says to contact the university or institution where the publication was produced.
Sources
- DiVA portal, “About DiVA”: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/aboutdiva.jsf (checked 2026-10-28)
- Uppsala University Library, “DiVA for researchers and administrators: Register”: https://libguides-en.ub.uu.se/diva_for_researchers_and_administrators/register (checked 2026-10-28)
- Umeå University Library, “About DiVA”: https://umu.se/en/library/publish/diva/about-diva (checked 2026-10-28)
