Value proposition

Connecting research and researchers

ORCID’s mission is to enable transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their contributions, and their affiliations by providing a unique, persistent identifier for individuals to use as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities.

We do this by providing three important things:

1. The ORCID iD: a unique, persistent identifier free of charge to researchers
2. An ORCID record connected to the ORCID iD, and
3. A set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), as well as the services and support of communities of practice that enable interoperability between an ORCID record and member organizations so researchers can choose to allow connection of their iD with their affiliations and contributions

ORCID is a global, not-for-profit organization sustained by fees from our member organizations. We are community-built and governed by a Board of Directors representative of our membership with wide stakeholder representation. ORCID is supported by a dedicated and knowledgeable professional staff.

Persistent identifiers for researchers, APIs, and Linked data