Frequently Asked Questions

The central goal of the Open Researcher and Contributor ID non-profit organization (ORCID) is to solve the long-standing name ambiguity problem in scholarly communication. Accurate attribution is a fundamental pillar of the scholarly record. Global identification infrastructure exists for content but not for the producers of that content, creating challenges in establishing the identity of authors and other contributors and reliably linking them to their published works.

The core mission of ORCID is to rectify this by creating a central registry of unique identifiers for individual researchers and an open and transparent linking mechanism between ORCID and other current author identifier schemes. This registry will be a centralized identity system for collecting and managing information describing i) contributors themselves and ii) relationships between contributors and their scholarly publications as well as various other types of academic output.

Following the 'Name Identifier Summit' in November 2009, where a cross-section of the research community explored approaches to address name ambiguity, the ORCID initiative was announced in December 2009. The ORCID Initiative was an interim entity formed to further explore these approaches, and ORCID, Inc. is the formal non-profit organization incorporated in August 2010 to apply the ideas produced by these explorations toward practically addressing the problem of name ambiguity.

Currently, ORCID, Inc. is managed by a Board of Directors, comprised of fourteen members of the global scholarly research community. In 2011 ORCID will begin to employ staff, starting with an interim Technical Director in January 2011. The Business Working Group (BWG), Technical Working Group (TWG), Outreach Working Group (OWG) and Legal Working Group (LWG) support the ORCID Board.

In 2011 ORCID, Inc. will complete a beta production system that functions to assign ORCIDs and performs name disambiguation. We will build the ORCID organization by recruiting additional participants, registering for tax-exempt status, and making information about ORCID available in many different ways. In parallel ORCID is developing a sustainable business model that will likely include membership and service fees supplemented by sponsorship, grants and loans. ORCID conducted a survey of the Participants in October 2010 to learn more about potential users' views; ORCID looks to conduct another survey in early 2011 to learn more about potential business models.

Several organizations have offered to contribute data sources and technologies to aid the initial development of the ORCID prototype. These contributions include a ResearcherID profile system from Thomson Reuters; author profiles from RePEc, Scholar Universe, and Scopus; and bibliographic data from the CrossRef metadata database. Additional technological needs will be identified as the beta production system is developed.

ORCID will link to other name identifier systems, and work has already started to integrate profile information from RePEc and Scopus. ORCID is also discussing integration with the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) and other name identifier initiatives.

ORCID and ISNI are separate organizations that address different aspects of unambiguously identifying people and parties. The background, context and goals of each organization are distinct.

ORCID was established to solve the problem of correct and accurate attribution of scholarly research output to individual researchers (see the ORCID FAQ - http://www.orcid.org/faq). The ORCID system is based on collaboration amongst publishers, universities, funding bodies and other stakeholders in scholarly communications. ORCID is committed to allowing individual researchers to create, claim, manage and control the privacy of their data or to optionally delegate the management of their data to their university or another third party. For more information on ISNI see the ISNI FAQ.

Because ORCID and ISNI have different purposes and serve different communities both organizations are necessary. The organizations will each hold different data, have different privacy and ownership rules for data, have different business models and offer different services. Most importantly of all, ISNI and ORCID will be identifying different things for different communities.

ORCID is committed to being interoperable with other identifier schemes, including ISNI.

Anyone with an interest in scholarly communications may become an ORCID Participant. When the system launches, academic and non-academic researchers may use ORCIDs to more efficiently and accurately record and present their research profiles. Research institutions and universities may use ORCIDs to efficiently retrieve an unambiguous publication record of their researchers. Publishers may use ORCIDs to better track and organize manuscripts and research-related writings. Funding agencies may use ORCIDs to assess and track researchers and research projects over time. The over 150 participating organizations are listed in the participant gallery.

Your organization may provide sponsorship funding support for ORCID and you or colleagues may express interest in engaging with activities of the BWG, TWG or OWG. We do welcome all contributions that are appropriate for the start-up phase of ORCID.

Interested organizations can register here. At this time there are no fees or obligations for participants; online registration will simply confirm that the organization has an active interest in this important initiative. It is likely that fees will begin to be charged as of 2012 when the system is in production, at which time Participants will have the option to become users of the production system. Deposition of data and individual uses of the system will always be free.
Participating organizations will receive access to the ORCID community wiki, along with a standing invitation to attend meetings twice a year open to all participants.

ORCID participants have met in person about every two months since December 2009. Future in-person participant meetings are planned every six months. Participants can also attend virtually via WebEx.

ORCID is a non-profit organization and in its start-up phase will rely on voluntary contributions from stakeholders from a variety of communities, including universities, libraries, scholarly societies, funding agencies, research organizations, and publishers. A first Sponsorship Call was announced in December 2010; other sources of income will be added in 2011.

The ORCID principles were published in December 2010. They guide the initiative as it grows and operates. The principles confirm our commitment to open data and open source, global participation, and respect of the privacy of individual researchers.

For individuals and non-participating organizations, the best way to keep in touch with the latest developments will be to check the News section of ORCID website for periodic updates. An RSS feed of ORCID News is also available. Interested individuals can also follow the ORCID Twitter account, Facebook page and LinkedIn group.

For participating organizations, the best way to stay in touch with our latest developments will be to visit the ORCID wiki. We also started a monthly newsletter for participants in early 2011.

ORCID and ISNI are separate organizations that address different aspects of unambiguously identifying people and parties. The background, context and goals of each organization are distinct.

ORCID was established to solve the problem of correct and accurate attribution of scholarly research output to individual researchers (see the ORCID FAQ - http://www.orcid.org/faq). The ORCID system is based on collaboration amongst publishers, universities, funding bodies and other stakeholders in scholarly communications. ORCID is committed to allowing individual researchers to create, claim, manage and control the privacy of their data or to optionally delegate the management of their data to their university or another third party. For more information on ISNI see the ISNI FAQ.

Because ORCID and ISNI have different purposes and serve different communities both organizations are necessary. The organizations will each hold different data, have different privacy and ownership rules for data, have different business models and offer different services. Most importantly of all, ISNI and ORCID will be identifying different things for different communities.

ORCID is committed to being interoperable with other identifier schemes, including ISNI.