diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 763cac5..a948f58 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
 Bug fixes
 * Provide default CRAN mirror if missing in install_load_cran_packages(), e.g., in a child R session during knitting. Fixes 'trying to use CRAN without setting a mirror' error (#218)
 * Update template.tex so that flextable package can be used to create tables in PDF documents (#226)
+* Clean up invalid ORCID placeholder generated by usethis 3.0.0 that threw error on R version 4.5.x (#248)
 
 Other improvements
 * create_visc_project() now discards README.Rmd after knitting template to README.md (#223)
diff --git a/R/create_visc_project.R b/R/create_visc_project.R
index 44a4867..15699ae 100644
--- a/R/create_visc_project.R
+++ b/R/create_visc_project.R
@@ -33,7 +33,15 @@ create_visc_project <- function(path, interactive = TRUE){
   usethis::create_package(
     path = path,
     rstudio = TRUE,
-    open = interactive
+    open = interactive,
+    # fields override for usethis 3.0.0 ORCID placeholder that errored in R 4.5
+    # https://github.com/r-lib/usethis/issues/2059
+    fields = list(
+      `Authors@R` = paste0(
+        "person(\"First\", \"Last\", email = \"first.last",
+        "@example.com\", role = c(\"aut\", \"cre\"))"
+      )
+    )
   )
 
   # must set active project otherwise it is <no active project>
diff --git a/man/use_visc_methods.Rd b/man/use_visc_methods.Rd
index 07c4a93..7b059b9 100644
--- a/man/use_visc_methods.Rd
+++ b/man/use_visc_methods.Rd
@@ -17,7 +17,6 @@ use_visc_methods(
 
 \item{interactive}{TRUE by default. FALSE is for non-interactive unit testing
 only.}
-
 }
 \description{
 Creates a "methods" directory that contains 3 "child" R Markdown documents