It's "ORCID and…," not "ORCID or…": How researcher identifiers work together to help researchers, build a better picture of research, and streamline administrative tasks

Abstract:  ORCID’s original purpose was to address the name ambiguity problem in scholarly research. In a world where researchers are rewarded based on their work, which is typically linked to them by their name, misattributions are common – think, for example, how many C. Wangs or A. Smiths appear in author lists. Global, multidisciplinary, and interoperable by design, ORCID is now helping to solve this and many other challenges in the research ecosystem.

To help meet the need for a fully-networked global research community, ORCID works with a wide range of research-related organizations around the world that are building ORCID into their systems and sharing their data (with their researchers’ permission). ORCID’s active member community enables connections between thousands of integrations and supports over 100 million individual contributions to research. These connections are stable and sustainable because ORCID is built on a set of values that commit it to working with all stakeholders in the research ecosystem with openness, inclusion, and trust. Without trust there can’t be meaningful collaboration or inclusion; without collaboration and inclusion, the openness that is so central to ORCID’s mission is meaningless.

This white paper includes three brief case studies of how ORCID complements other types of researcher identifiers. It shows how ORCID enables global collaboration by extending the coverage of national systems; how it supports disciplinary inclusion and partnerships by working with subject-based infrastructures; and how it underpins interoperability by working openly with proprietary services.