ORCID
acronymPronunciation: /ˈɔːrkɪd/
Also written as: ORCID — Open Researcher and Contributor ID
A persistent digital identifier that uniquely distinguishes researchers and connects them with their scholarly contributions across databases and publishers.
Full Definition
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a free, unique, persistent identifier for researchers that helps solve the author name ambiguity problem in scholarly communication. The system provides a central registry where researchers can maintain their publication lists, affiliations, and other professional information while controlling privacy settings. Publishers, funding agencies, and institutions increasingly integrate ORCID into their submission and reporting workflows to ensure accurate attribution and streamline administrative processes.
Plain English
A special ID number that helps identify researchers and keeps track of their published work, like a social security number for scientists and scholars.
In Editorial Context
An author identification system that improves manuscript submission workflows, enables accurate attribution tracking, and facilitates automated population of contributor metadata in publishing systems.
Etymology & History
Created to address author disambiguation challenges in digital scholarly publishing, launched by nonprofit organization with support from major publishers and research institutions.
Rapidly adopted across scholarly infrastructure since 2012 launch; increasingly required by publishers, funders, and institutions for submission and reporting processes.
Usage
"Authors submitting to our institutional repository must provide their ORCID identifier to ensure proper attribution and discoverability."
Usage note: Officially styled as 'ORCID iD' by the organization, though commonly referred to simply as 'ORCID' in practice.
Context: manuscript submission, author identification, research administration, bibliographic databases
Region: international
Also known as
Don't confuse with
Sometimes confused with other researcher identification systems like ResearcherID or publisher-specific author IDs, but ORCID is cross-platform and researcher-controlled.