ORCID Celebrates OAWeek 2025 with Continued Support of Open Research Information Exploration

October is a great month for ORCID, and one that espouses one of our most important values: “Open”!  It marks our founding anniversary and the annual release of our Public Data File. The ORCID Public Data File is a downloadable dataset that contains a snapshot of all publicly available information from the ORCID Registry at the time of its creation. In other words, it contains all user metadata in the Registry, which is also fully controlled by users that users have set to be visible to everyone.

For 13 years, ORCID has kept a founding commitment, stated as one of our ten founding principles, to release the public data in our Registry. We do so under a CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication, which means there are no restrictions on its use.

What can you do with the public data file?

There are endless possibilities for using the Public Data File. This vast resource includes public data such as ORCID iDs, names, and information about affiliations, works, funding, peer review, professional activities, and research resources.

The data has been creatively used by the community since the beginning. One notable use is to build expert finder services. Institutions can use the data to synchronize public data for internal systems or for research reporting. This helps research institutions conduct reporting and assessments. It’s also been used for projects to study scientific migrations and mapping collaboration networks. For example, in 2021, the Research Graph Foundation used Registry data to map the digital footprint of COVID-19 research!

Our most recent development with the Public Data File includes a partnership with Digital Science to host the Public Data Files from 2023, 2024, and 2025 on Google BigQuery, making it even easier to explore and use the summary data found in the file. To learn more about how to navigate the Public Data File, visit our Google BigQuery information page and our blog announcing the partnership.

If you use this tool, we simply ask that you give attribution to Digital Science and link back to this page. Additionally, we ask for users to give credit to ORCID as the source of the Public Data File, linking back to this page where technologically feasible so as to facilitate access for others.

Of course, the ORCID Public Data File is also still available in XML format and can be converted to JSON by using our ORCID Conversion Library in our Github repository. Read more in our Public Data File Use Policy for information.

Regardless of how you access the ORCID Public Data File, we’d love to know, so please reach out to tell us about your project plans.

Using the Public API to support exploration of Chilean research

The ORCID Chilean Consortium, formed by CINCEL in 2022, recently shared their new web-based platform—Data ORCID Chile—with the wider ORCID global consortia. This unique platform was developed to support member institutions of the Chilean Consortium to better access and use ORCID Registry data more effectively using  ORCID public data via the Public API. This powerful tool is also the first of its kind in the ORCID Community.

Soledad Bravo with the ORCID Chile Consortium said, “Data ORCID Chile is the first open and replicable platform of its kind in the ORCID community. It complements the Member Portal by empowering institutions with operational access to researchers’ data. We invite every consortium to explore its potential and make the most of its capabilities.”

Consortia that need an open-source tool to nurture their research communities are invited to connect with the ORCID Chilean Consortium Lead to also develop this powerful platform!

Data ORCID Chile is designed to:

• Rapidly consult and export public ORCID metadata (works, funding, affiliations).
• Provide technical integration guides and documentation for their member institutional systems/platforms.
• Offer visual dashboards and downloadable datasets for analysis and reporting.
• Operational access to researcher-level data.
• Local caching for faster queries and bulk downloads with simplified workflows for institutions with limited technical capacity.

Some of the key features of this tool include:

• Researcher Directory: Users can view and export lists of affiliated researchers based on ORCID-declared employment and education.
• Works & Funding Cache: Download public data in .csv or .xlsx formats, with options to rebuild cache from ORCID.
• Metrics Dashboard: Analyze publication types, productivity, journal presence, and funding distribution.
•  Integration Guides: Step-by-step instructions for using ORCID’s public API to read data (pull) and write data (push).

Collaboration and scalability

Data ORCID Chile is tailored for universities and research institutions in Chile, but its model can be adapted by other national consortia as well. This tool empowers institutions to leverage ORCID data more fully in their research management and evaluation processes. Other national consortia are invited to explore this model and consider adapting it to their own contexts, keeping in mind that utilizing their Member API will enable them to avoid [quota and rate limiting] restrictions with the Public API.

To learn more about using this tool, please contact Gastón Olivares at CINCEL.

Has publicly available ORCID data been useful to you? Please tag us on social media and let us know or reach out to us here. Happy exploring!