An affiliation item in an ORCID record asserting that the iD holder is or was employed by a named organisation, with start date, optional end date, department, role title, and the organisation's disambiguated identifier (typically a ROR ID).

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 10 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
An employment asserted by University of Toronto with start 2018-09, role 'Assistant Professor', department 'Department of Chemistry', organisation identifier ROR https://ror.org/03dbr7087.
Is an instance
A previous employment with end date marking the move between institutions.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A visiting talk or seminar invitation is not an employment.
Not an instance
A grant-funded studentship is generally captured as an ORCID education or funding item, not an employment.

Editorial commentary

Employment assertions are the canonical mechanism for tying an ORCID iD to an organisation over time. When asserted by the employing organisation (a ‘trusted organisation’ under the Member API), the assertion carries higher trust than a self-claim and is increasingly used by funders and publishers to verify current affiliation. Each employment can carry a disambiguated organisation identifier so the organisation is unambiguous across name changes, mergers, and language variants.

References

ORCID Inc., 'Add an affiliation to your ORCID record' (support.orcid.org).

Also known as

ORCID affiliation (employment)

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="ORCID employment"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/orcid-employment" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/orcid-employment",
  "name": "ORCID employment",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/orcid-employment",
  "description": "An affiliation item in an ORCID record asserting that the iD holder is or was employed by a named organisation, with start date, optional end date, department, role title, and the organisation's disambiguated identifier (typically a ROR ID).",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/persistent-identifiers#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/orcid-employment",
  "sameAs": [
    "ORCID affiliation (employment)"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-10T02:06:19",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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