ORCID
ORCID is a persistent identifier for individual researchers, designed to disambiguate authors whose names are common, change, or appear in multiple writing systems. Operated by a nonprofit and integrated with DOI registration agencies, it links a researcher to their publications, datasets, grants, and affiliations.
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a persistent identifier for individual people who contribute to research. It addresses the long-standing problem that personal names are not unique: many researchers share a name, names change after marriage or transliteration, and name disambiguation across writing systems is hard for both humans and search engines. An ORCID iD is a 16-digit number expressed as a URL, for example `https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097`. The final character is a check digit computed with the ISO 7064 MOD 11-2 algorithm and may appear as `X` when the value is 10. The system was launched as an independent nonprofit, ORCID, Inc., in 2010, with the public registry opening in October 2012. Researchers can attach works, employment, education, peer reviews, and funding to their profile, controlling which items are public. ORCID is integrated with the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) ecosystem through agencies such as Crossref and DataCite: when a new DOI is registered with an author's ORCID iD attached, that author's ORCID record can be updated automatically. Many journals, funders, and institutions now require an ORCID iD for submissions, grant applications, or staff profiles. By the mid-2020s the registry held tens of millions of accounts and over a thousand member organisations spanning publishers, universities, and funding bodies.