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ORCID

by ORCID, Inc. · Service · also known as ORCID iD, Open Researcher and Contributor ID

Non-profit registry of persistent researcher identifiers (ORCID iDs) with user-controlled records, Public and Member APIs, OAuth sign-in and an annual CC0 public data file

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Link verified Nov 2, 2026

Overview

ORCID is a non-profit organization that issues persistent identifiers for researchers and maintains the records linked to them. An ORCID iD distinguishes a researcher from others with similar names and travels with them across employers, funders and publishers; the record lists works, affiliations, funding and peer-review activity, with privacy settings controlled by the researcher and "trust markers" indicating which items were asserted by member organizations. Registration and record maintenance are free for individuals; the organization is funded by fees from member institutions, publishers and funders.

Integrations use two APIs. The Public API, available to anyone after registering client credentials, supports OAuth sign-in with ORCID, collection of authenticated iDs and reading and searching public record data in XML or JSON, with a sandbox for testing. The Member API, for fee-paying members, adds the ability to write to records with the researcher's permission and comes with integration support. An annual public data file of all public record content is released under a CC0 waiver. ORCID does not verify the claims in records (members' assertions provide the trust layer), and the registry contains many sparsely populated or duplicate records, so it is an identifier rather than a bibliometric source.

Editorial note on uncertainty. 'enterprise' pricing model denotes organizational membership fees; no SPDX identifier recorded because the repository's LICENSE.md could not be retrieved in raw form.

Capabilities

  • Persistent researcher identifiers with self-maintained records
  • Privacy controls and trust markers for member-asserted data
  • OAuth sign-in with ORCID
  • Public API for reading and searching public data
  • Member API for writing to records with permission
  • Annual CC0 public data file
  • Sandbox environment for integrations

Typical workflows

  1. Adding ORCID login to a journal or repository system
  2. Disambiguating authors in a bibliometric dataset
  3. Auto-updating a researcher's works from Crossref and DataCite

Strengths

  • Free for researchers and widely required by publishers and funders
  • Open APIs and CC0 data file
  • Non-profit governance

Limitations

  • Record contents are self-reported unless member-asserted
  • Many sparse or duplicate records
  • Write access requires paid membership

Prerequisites

  • Free ORCID account; client credentials for API use

Who it is for

  • Researchers
  • Publishers, funders and institutions integrating identity
  • Scientometricians

Alternatives & comparison

OpenAlex builds its own author entities and links them to ORCID iDs; Crossref registers DOIs for works and carries ORCID iDs in metadata; Google Scholar profiles are a proprietary alternative identity layer without an API. ORCID is the neutral identifier the others reference.

  • Crossref

    Membership organization that registers DOIs for scholarly content and exposes the metadata through a free public REST API, content negotiation and the paid Metadata Plus service

    ProprietaryFree
  • Google Scholar

    Free scholarly search engine from Google that indexes articles, theses, books and court opinions with citation counts and author profiles

    ProprietaryFree
  • OpenAlex

    Open catalog of the global research system: works, authors, sources, institutions and topics under CC0, served by a REST API, web app and S3 snapshot

    Open sourceFree
  • Zenodo

    Free general-purpose research repository operated by CERN that assigns DOIs to datasets, software, papers and other outputs, with a REST API, OAI-PMH, GitHub release archiving and CC0 metadata

    Open sourceFree
Compare ORCID with its alternatives →

Sources & verification

Primary sources consulted for this record. Claims are tied to the fields each source supports; the automated link checker re-verifies every URL on a schedule.

  • Official documentation
    ORCID Documentation

    https://info.orcid.org/documentation

    Supports: docs_url

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Official documentation
    About ORCID

    https://info.orcid.org/what-is-orcid

    Supports: description, pricing_model, vendor, capabilities

    Non-profit; free for researchers; member fees; CC0 public data file

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Official documentation
    Public API - ORCID

    https://info.orcid.org/what-is-orcid/services/public-api

    Supports: capabilities, interfaces

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Official site
    ORCID

    https://orcid.org/

    Supports: name, summary

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Repository
    ORCID/ORCID-Source

    https://github.com/ORCID/ORCID-Source

    Supports: repo_url, source_model

    checked Nov 1, 2026
Confidence
High
Reviewed
Nov 1, 2026
Links
Verified · Nov 2, 2026

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