Scholarly Publishers and ORCID: Partnering to Advance Trust in Research

In the recent paper, The Researcher Identity Verification Framework, STM suggested that editorial teams can assess a user’s trustworthiness by focusing on two main aspects:

• Verification of individual identity: Confirming the user’s personal identity.
• Assessment of claim credibility: Evaluating the reliability of information linked to the user’s identity.

ORCID addresses both dimensions. By requiring authors to connect their authenticated ORCID iD during the submission process, editors can “know their author” through a persistent unique identifier that is maintained by the researcher themselves. This authentication step can help reduce the risk of impersonation or fraudulent submissions. ORCID records, populated with trusted data from sources such as publishers, funders, and academic institutions, provide a rich and verified history of a researcher’s contributions, allowing editorial teams to address the credibility of their claims and scholarly output.

As The Researcher Identity Verification Framework states: “By working with ORCID…platforms can gain confidence in user identities and contribute to a positive feedback loop by adding verified claims back into researchers’ profiles.” This means that every verified publication linked to an ORCID iD strengthens the overall trustworthiness of that researcher’s profile, benefiting the entire scholarly ecosystem as that data gets propagated throughout it.

By working with ORCID…platforms can gain confidence in user identities and contribute to a positive feedback loop by adding verified claims back into researchers’ profiles. – The Researcher Identity Verification Framework

When ORCID is integrated into submission and peer review systems, publishers not only benefit from streamlined workflows, reduced administrative overhead, and cleaner, standardized metadata, they also gain important context about the authors’ and co-authors’ scholarly bona fides through the presence of Trust Markers in their ORCID record.

Early adopters were largely publishers

While ORCID now has a broad base of organizational support, with the greatest participation among universities worldwide, historically, publishers have contributed the largest amount of Trust Markers to ORCID records, a testament to their long-standing commitment to a more transparent and trustworthy scholarly ecosystem. Publishers were among ORCID’s earliest and most enthusiastic supporters, and they continue to play a leading role in integrating ORCID into their workflows. And while recent national persistent identifier strategies from governments and policy makers have gained momentum, the continued and evolving support from the publishing community remains fundamental to strengthening the scholarly record and improving ORCID adoption rates globally.

Early supporters: a foundation of collaboration

Publishers were among the earliest adopters and steadfast supporters of ORCID, playing a foundational role in our establishment and growth. During ORCID’s launch phase, many publishers generously provided grants and other funding, not to mention invaluable volunteer labor. Their commitment ensured our non-profit organization got off to a strong start, allowing us to build the infrastructure for unique researcher identification. In many ways, ORCID has publishers to thank for its widespread adoption today.

Funders… and consortia leads

More recently, leadership for ORCID adoption has been included in the development of broader national persistent identifier strategies that outline the importance of creating an ecosystem of openly identifiable research activity. However, as recent analysis makes clear, these initiatives do not shift the responsibility or momentum away from the established communities of support built around ORCID adoption. Instead, national persistent identifier strategies place new focus on the importance of publisher and funder support to meet their priorities.

The recently released Consultation draft of the Australian Persistent Identifier (PID) Benchmarking Toolkit (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29281667) highlights the power of national initiatives to improve ORCID adoption. In the period between 2020 and 2024, Australia has the third highest ORCID adoption rate for countries with estimated researcher pools of greater than 50,000. The average completeness of these records is 55%, ranking second against the same set of countries. The success of interventions at the funder and institution level are also evident. The ORCID adoption and completion rates for researchers that receive funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) or the National Health and Medical Research Council (NH & MRC) are amongst the best in the world. At an institutional level, it is also shown that local interventions also make a difference on the adoption and completeness. 

Underpinning these achievements, the extent to which these advances are also dependent on publisher commitment to shared research information infrastructure is also highlighted. In particular, two analyses stand out. Critical to the way that researchers benefit from ORCID is that they need only enter information once. Provided a researcher has set up the right integrations within their ORCID record, once published, their ORCID is included in the metadata of the publication that is deposited in Crossref, which is then in turn pushed into their ORCID record. Analysis shows that most publishers push ORCID metadata into Crossref, but some are yet to realize the impact that using this functionality could have. As the analysis makes clear, by 2024 the vast majority of publishers have made great progress in passing on ORCID assertions for most of their journals; (with the notable exception of one of the recent, fast-growing “born OA” publishers.)

The journey from initial to best practice. The yearly percentage of journals by publisher for which at least one record can be found in Crossref containing ORCID records. (Australian National Persistent Identifier (PID) Benchmarking Toolkit, p. 29)

The report also looks at the shift in publisher practice from initially mandating only that the corresponding author should have an ORCID to ensuring that all authors have an ORCID. The chart below looks at the percentage of multi-author articles by publishers in 2024 that have more than one ORCID vs. the percentage that have two or more.

Including co-authors; publishing is rarely a solo effort

This progress made in collecting ORCID iDs from co-authors as well as corresponding authors seems to reflect the simple truth that publishing is rarely a solo effort. Most scholarly outputs are the culmination of work by multiple researchers, and co-authors deserve the same level of recognition and attribution as corresponding authors. Focusing only on corresponding or submitting authors hampers visibility of all authors and can result in the unintended exclusion of researchers whose work was integral to the publication. Early career authors especially benefit from publishers contributing co-author data to ORCID records, but interdisciplinary contributors, and those from underrepresented groups or geographies also benefit from higher visibility in the research ecosystem.

Focusing only on corresponding or submitting authors hampers visibility of all authors and can result in the unintended exclusion of researchers whose work was integral to the publication

Collecting and connecting ORCID iDs for co-authors helps create a fuller picture of scholarly collaboration that can be helpful to stakeholders across the research ecosystem. Aside from considerations of diversity and inclusion, comprehensive author and co-author metadata can provide context that can be helpful in research integrity assessment. 

Lack of co-author data can weaken the ability of other stakeholders to trace and/or verify full authorship of a publication. Many institutions, especially funders, rely on ORCID data for accurate reporting and compliance. Including all contributors and co-authors via their authenticated ORCID iDs improves the completeness and reliability of those records. It also reinforces researcher engagement by making it easier for researchers to track and demonstrate their full range of contributions to scholarly works.

Next steps publishers can take

Whether you’ve newly adopted ORCID, or are looking to improve your integration, there are several things you can do to increase the value of ORCID in your organization. 

• Enable authenticated ORCID sign-in and invite co-authors to connect their iDs during submission. Most of the main manuscript submission platforms, including ORCID Certified Service Providers Editorial Manager from Aries, Editorial System from Bentus Web Technologies, and Open Journal System from PKP support this workflow
• Contribute publication metadata to author AND co-author records via Crossref’s ORCID auto-update or directly via the ORCID Member API — adding Trust Markers that benefit both authors, their institutions, and their funders. This recommendation was also made by STM in their recent report, The Researcher Identity Verification Framework
• Educate your journal editors about how ORCID provides context around an author’s identity and career, which can help them more effectively “know their authors” 
• Acknowledge and credit your editors’ academic service through the professional activities section of their ORCID records 
• Advocate for co-author participation by making it easy for all contributors to link their ORCID records, perhaps through clear prompts and explanations within your submission system
• Add clear prompts into various workflow points to communicate how linking ORCID records supports authors getting proper credit for their work, enhances discovery, and contributes to a more trusted scholarly record.

It takes all of us to make the scholarly record resilient

ORCID’s vision is a world where all who participate in research, scholarship, and innovation are uniquely identified and connected to their contributions across disciplines, borders, and time. In today’s evolving research landscape, transparency, interoperability, and trust are more important than ever.

Publishers have always played an important role in helping us realize that vision. And while many journals have enthusiastically supported ORCID and collect authenticated ORCID iDs for corresponding authors, we invite them to take the next step: fully embedding ORCID into their workflows, extending that integration to include co-author data.

No single tool, stakeholder, or policy can solve the complex challenges to research integrity we face; it will take action and commitment from the entire community to build trust and resilience into the scholarly record. Publishers are in a unique position to make an impact and have a lot of momentum to build upon. It’s not just a matter of improving metadata infrastructure. It’s about helping the global research community ensure proper credit, streamlining reporting and discovery, and contributing to a more open and connected scholarly record.

Help us to help you: tell us about your ORCID collection policies

Publishers and editors: please take a quick survey about how your organization collects and uses ORCID iDs. Your unique perspective is really important and will help us understand how ORCID is integrated, what works best, and where we can improve.