ORCID provides a persistent identifier for a researcher, plus an API for reading and writing the record of their affiliations, works and funding. It solves name ambiguity — the same person publishing under different name forms across a career and several institutions.
ORCID
ORCID is identity infrastructure for people, run as a non-profit with an open API and a membership model. It is also the clearest example in the scholarly stack of consent done properly: a researcher controls which parts of their record are public, limited or private, and which systems may write to it.
- A persistent person identifier - Stable across institutions, name changes and career moves.
- A public API - Read the record openly; write to it with the researcher’s authorisation.
- Scoped, revocable trust - A researcher grants a system permission to update their record and can withdraw it.
- Deep integration - Publishers, funders and repositories read and write the same identifier.
ORCID deserves attention beyond its own sector, because it ships the artifact almost nobody else does. The State of Education & EdTech APIs measures consent and delegated identity at 3.3% of the education market — and the whole catalog at 3.3% — while ORCID has run scoped, revocable, person-controlled delegation as a core product feature since 2012. It is a working answer to a question most markets have not started on.
Referenced in API Evangelist papers
This standard shows up in my published research. These reports read the machine-readable evidence provider by provider — and put this standard in the context of a real sector.
The State of Education & EdTech APIs
Scoped, revocable, person-controlled delegation shipped since 2012 — in a market measuring consent and delegated identity at 3.3%.
