Standards
ORCID iD
A persistent identifier that distinguishes contributors to research.
- Kind
- Identifiers
- Steward
- ORCID, Inc.
- Official source
- https://info.orcid.org/what-is-orcid/
What it describes
An ORCID iD distinguishes a researcher or other contributor from people with similar names. ORCID records can link works, affiliations, and other identifiers, with visibility and source information for individual assertions. A verified ORCID iD is useful when author names vary across journals, transliterations, or career stages. The identifier refers to a person, while the attached claims need their own provenance.
An ORCID profile is not a universal credential or an automatic proof that every listed work belongs to its holder. Record items may be entered by the account holder or added by trusted organizations under permission. The source and assertion date matter. Systems should keep the ORCID iD separate from current employer, role, and publication claims, which can change independently.
Structure
Sixteen-digit identifier displayed in four groups; final character is an ISO 7064 MOD 11-2 check character, which may be X.
Useful for
- Disambiguate research contributors.
- Join works across name variants.
- Attribute assertions to profile sources.
Limits
- Does not prove every profile claim.
- Affiliations can change.
- Name matching alone is insufficient.
How it is used in practice
Authors share names. Names are transliterated differently by different publishers, change with marriage or migration, and are abbreviated to initials in many databases. An ORCID iD gives each contributor a persistent identifier that follows them across publishers, funders and repositories. Journals ask authors to supply an iD at submission, funders ask applicants for one, and institutions use it to collect their researchers' outputs. Because the register is public and the record can be read through an open interface, the identifier makes it practical to ask what works are associated with a person without searching on a name.
An ORCID record is a set of assertions, each with a source. Some items are entered by the person themself, some are added by an organization with the person's permission, and some are pushed by a publisher or a registration agency. The record shows which, and this matters when the record is used as evidence about a person's work or affiliations.
A worked example
A fictional author, Dr. Anna Halden, published papers under "A. Halden" at one institution and "Anna K. Halden-Meyer" at another. A bibliometric file contains two author strings. A name-matching rule would join them only with luck.
Both papers carry the same ORCID iD in their metadata. The analyst retrieves the public record and finds both works listed, each with a source and an added date. The statement recorded is that the two author strings are linked to one iD by two independent sources, namely the publisher metadata of each paper, and that the ORCID record agrees. A second author with the same surname and initials appears with a different iD, which prevents a false merge. The analyst does not treat the iD as evidence about the person's current affiliation, for which the affiliation entry with its source and date is the relevant item.
Evaluating a claim that rests on an ORCID iD
Distinguish the iD, the record and the assertion. The iD is a stable pointer. The record is the profile at the moment you read it. The assertion is a specific item, such as a work or an employment, with a named source. A claim that a person authored a work is supported most strongly when the publisher's metadata and the ORCID record agree and the iD was supplied by the author through authentication, not typed into a form by someone else.
Check for gaps. Many researchers have an iD with few items, and some items are marked with limited visibility. An empty record is not evidence that a person has published nothing. Record the retrieval date and note which items were visible to the reader at the time, because visibility settings can change.
Confusions to avoid
An ORCID iD is not a credential. It does not prove a degree, a position or the correctness of any listed work. It is also not unique to one role: the same person may be an author, a reviewer and a grant holder, and the iD is the same in each, but the evidence for each role is different.
Organization identifiers are separate. Affiliations in an ORCID record can refer to an organization by name or by an identifier such as a ROR ID, and a record that relies on the name alone inherits all the ambiguity of names. When linking a person to an institution, keep the person identifier and the organization identifier as distinct fields and cite the item that connects them.
Questions a reviewer can ask
Which items in the record support the claim, and who is the source of each? Was the iD supplied by the author through authentication or typed in by someone else? Do the publisher metadata and the ORCID record agree about the work? Are there items with restricted visibility that this reader cannot see? Is an affiliation stated by name or with an organization identifier? When was the record read, and was anything changed after?
Related terms
Found an error on this page? See corrections for what counts as one, how to report it and the dated log.
Enquiry
Which of your sources carry ORCID iD?
Tell us which sources carry it, which key the same entity some other way and who may read which. We reply with whether and how a first record would use this identifier.
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