ORCID invited position

An affiliation item in an ORCID record asserting that the iD holder holds or held a paid or unpaid invited role — such as a visiting lectureship, honorary or guest-researcher appointment, or emeritus professorship — at a named organisation, as distinct from an ordinary employment relationship. Captured with the organisation's name and disambiguated identifier (typically a ROR ID), department, role/title, start date, and optional end date. In the ORCID record schema and API, "invited-position" is one of seven distinct affiliation-type values (alongside employment, education, qualification, distinction, membership, and service) — it is a role the person actually holds, not merely an honour received (that is "distinction") and not professional service such as board or committee work (that is "service"), even though ORCID's own web entry form groups invited position and distinction into one combined section.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 10 Jul 2026

Worked examples

Is an instance

A researcher who retired from a university continues an unpaid 'Emeritus Professor' role there: entered as an ORCID invited position with organisation name and ROR ID, department, role/title 'Emeritus Professor', a start date, and no end date.

Is an instance

A researcher spends one academic term as a paid 'Visiting Lecturer' at a second institution while remaining employed at their home institution: entered as a separate ORCID invited position with its own start and end dates spanning the term, alongside (not replacing) their ORCID employment record at the home institution.

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance

A standing, ongoing job — even one with an honorific-sounding title — belongs under ORCID employment, not invited position; invited position is for a role the person is invited into elsewhere, not their regular post.

Not an instance

An honorary degree, award, or fellowship recognising past achievement with no associated ongoing role belongs under ORCID's separate 'distinction' affiliation type, not invited position, even though ORCID's entry form presents the two together in one section.

Not an instance

Serving on an editorial board, grant review panel, or professional-society committee is recorded under ORCID's separate 'service' affiliation type, not invited position — service covers professional activity contributed to an organisation, not a position held at it.

ORCID’s data model separates “invited position” from ordinary employment. It covers a paid or unpaid role a researcher is invited into at an organisation other than (or in addition to) their primary employer — a visiting lectureship, a guest-researcher appointment, or an emeritus professorship — rather than a standing job. As with other affiliation types, each entry can be self-asserted or, if the organisation is a “trusted party” on the ORCID Member API, asserted directly by the organisation, and can carry a disambiguated organisation identifier (typically a ROR ID) alongside department, role/title, start date, and optional end date.

In ORCID’s web entry form, “invited position” and “distinction” share a single combined entry section (“Invited position or distinction”), which is a common source of confusion. In the underlying ORCID record schema (and the ORCID API/XML), they remain two separate affiliation-type values: invited-position is an actual role held, while distinction records an honorary award or recognition with no associated role. A CRIS or research-information system consuming ORCID data via the API needs to read the affiliation-type field itself to tell them apart, not just the section a human sees on orcid.org.

References

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

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

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/orcid-invited-position",
  "name": "ORCID invited position",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/orcid-invited-position",
  "description": "An affiliation item in an ORCID record asserting that the iD holder holds or held a paid or unpaid invited role — such as a visiting lectureship, honorary or guest-researcher appointment, or emeritus professorship — at a named organisation, as distinct from an ordinary employment relationship. Captured with the organisation's name and disambiguated identifier (typically a ROR ID), department, role/title, start date, and optional end date. In the ORCID record schema and API, \"invited-position\" is one of seven distinct affiliation-type values (alongside employment, education, qualification, distinction, membership, and service) — it is a role the person actually holds, not merely an honour received (that is \"distinction\") and not professional service such as board or committee work (that is \"service\"), even though ORCID's own web entry form groups invited position and distinction into one combined section.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/persistent-identifiers#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/orcid-invited-position",
  "sameAs": [
    "ORCID affiliation (invited position)",
    "Invited position (ORCID)"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-10T01:53:18",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}