Researchers are at the heart of ORCID and the center of everything that scholarly and research publishers do. Accurate author and reviewer information is vital to indexing, search and discovery, publication tracking, funding and resource use attribution, and supporting peer review. ORCID tackles the following problems:
- Author disambiguation via a unique persistent identifier
- A trusted list of activities attached to the identifier
- Improved accuracy and time savings when submitting scholarly works, applying for grants and reporting.
ORCID offers a number of features to support our vision and our mission. We provide the registry, a public API, a member API, an annual public data file plus services to support our members. We try our best to balance the needs of the researchers, the institutions they work with and the wider community.
The registry and services are constantly evolving as we work to fulfil our mission. You can see our strategic priorities on our Product Roadmap.
ORCID offers APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow your systems to connect to the ORCID registry, including obtaining authenticated ORCID iDs, reading from and writing to ORCID records. Some API functions are freely available to anyone; others are only available to ORCID member organizations, which also benefit from support from our dedicated Engagement team.
We encourage all organizations using ORCID – members and non-members – to join our API Users Group to ensure that you are kept up to date with our API news and provides you the ability to ask API questions to the wider community.
A basic chart of the differences between the ORCID APIs is set out below. A more in-depth chart is available at our membership information page, which sets out benefits including reporting.
API TYPES & FEATURES
| API | Features |
| Public API | Authenticate: Get a user’s authenticated ORCID iD Read (Public): Read public data on ORCID records |
| Member API | Authenticate: Get a user’s authenticated ORCID iD Read: Read public and limited-access data on ORCID records Add: Post new items to a record (with the users permission) Update: Edit or delete items you previously added One integration (client credentials) |
Premium Member API | Authenticate: Get a user’s authenticated ORCID iD Read: Read public and limited-access data on ORCID records Add: Post new items to a record (with the users permission) Update: Edit or delete items you previously added Token delegation: Transfer permissions granted to own client to another member client Webhooks: Receive notifications of updates to your users’ ORCID records Multiple integrations: (client credentials) |