ResearcherID

ResearcherID is Clarivate's proprietary author identifier for the Web of Science ecosystem: a unique alphanumeric code (format letter(s)-numbers-year) assigned when a researcher creates a Web of Science Researcher Profile, used to disambiguate that person's publications and citation metrics within Web of Science and InCites. Since Clarivate retired Publons as a separate product in April 2022, ResearcherID exists as the identifier component of the unified Web of Science Researcher Profile rather than a standalone product, and (once a researcher explicitly connects the two accounts) two-way syncs publications with a connected ORCID iD.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 18 Jul 2026

Worked examples

Is an instance

A researcher creates a free Web of Science Researcher Profile and is automatically assigned a ResearcherID (an alphanumeric code in the format letter(s)-numbers-year); they then connect it to their ORCID iD so new publications added to either record sync automatically.

Is an instance

An institutional research office pulling a faculty member's Web of Science-indexed publication count for an annual output report cites that person's Web of Science Researcher Profile/ResearcherID as the source system, distinct from a Scopus-based count pulled via a separate Scopus Author ID.

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance

A Scopus Author ID is not a ResearcherID -- it is Elsevier's independently assigned, algorithmically generated author identifier within Scopus, unconnected to Clarivate's Web of Science systems unless a researcher manually links it via ORCID.

Not an instance

An ORCID iD is not a ResearcherID -- ORCID is a non-profit, publisher-agnostic identifier intended to follow a researcher across their whole career; ResearcherID is Clarivate-proprietary and scoped specifically to Web of Science, even though the two are commonly connected and synced together.

What ResearcherID is

ResearcherID is Clarivate’s proprietary author identifier for the Web of Science ecosystem: a unique alphanumeric code, in the format letter(s)–numbers–year (e.g. A-1234-2008 as an illustration of the pattern, not a real registered researcher), assigned to a person when they create a Web of Science Researcher Profile. It exists to disambiguate one researcher’s publications, citation counts, and derived metrics (h-index, records feeding into the Journal Impact Factor via Journal Citation Reports) inside Clarivate’s own products — Web of Science and InCites — the same author-disambiguation problem ORCID iDs solve at a cross-publisher, cross-database scale.

As of 2026, ResearcherID is not sold or presented as a separate, standalone product. It survives as the identifier component embedded inside the unified Web of Science Researcher Profile — free to create and manage at webofscience.com, though full document searching on the underlying database still requires an institutional Web of Science subscription.

History: from a standalone ID to a unified researcher profile

Thomson Reuters launched ResearcherID in January 2008 as an addition to the Web of Science database, specifically to address author-name ambiguity in the scientific literature (the same researcher publishing under initials, a maiden name, or a common surname shared by unrelated authors). Its subsequent history tracks Clarivate’s broader consolidation of researcher-identity tools:

2012 — ResearcherID began integrating with the newly-launched ORCID registry, allowing the two systems to share and verify author information.
April 2019 — ResearcherID was merged into Publons, Clarivate’s platform for tracking peer-review and journal-editing activity alongside publications.
April 2022 — Clarivate retired Publons as a separate destination and migrated its profiles into native Web of Science Researcher Profiles, so publication records, citation metrics, and verified peer-review history now live in one place inside Web of Science itself rather than across three historically separate tools (ResearcherID, Publons, and the Web of Science author search).

A citation, library guide, or older institutional policy that still refers to a researcher’s “ResearcherID number” is describing this same underlying identifier, now surfaced through the Web of Science Researcher Profile rather than a standalone ResearcherID.com site.

How ResearcherID relates to ORCID

ResearcherID and ORCID are not interchangeable, even though they are now designed to work together. The distinction that matters operationally:

Governance and scope: ORCID is a non-profit, publisher- and database-agnostic identifier intended to follow a researcher across their entire career, independent of any one vendor. ResearcherID is Clarivate-proprietary and scoped specifically to the Web of Science ecosystem — it has no standing or meaning outside Clarivate’s own products.
Sync, not replacement: a researcher connects their ORCID iD to their Web of Science Researcher Profile through an explicit authorization step (an “ORCID syncing” connection in profile settings). Once connected, Clarivate’s own documentation describes the relationship as a two-way sync: publications added on either side can flow to the other, and verified peer-review activity logged through Web of Science can be exported to the researcher’s ORCID record if the researcher opts in. Connecting the two does not merge them into one identifier — a researcher retains both a distinct ORCID iD and a distinct Web of Science Researcher Profile/ResearcherID, linked rather than unified.
Nothing is automatic without that step: creating a Web of Science Researcher Profile does not automatically create or update an ORCID record, and vice versa. The sync only runs for accounts a researcher has actively connected.

Why research administrators should care

A single researcher can accumulate several independently-assigned identifiers that all describe the same person — an ORCID iD, a Web of Science ResearcherID/Researcher Profile, and a Scopus Author ID — issued by three different organizations (ORCID Inc., Clarivate, and Elsevier respectively) with no shared registry connecting them by default. That fragmentation has direct operational consequences for a research office:

Publication-list accuracy for institutional reporting. A faculty output report, tenure/promotion dossier, or funder-compliance publication list pulled via a researcher’s Web of Science Researcher Profile will not necessarily match a list pulled from Scopus or from the researcher’s ORCID record — each database has independently curated coverage, its own disambiguation logic, and its own indexing lag. Knowing which identifier sourced a given list is part of being able to explain a discrepancy, not an incidental detail.
Avoiding duplicate identifier management. Encouraging researchers to treat their ORCID iD as the primary, portable identifier — and to connect it to their Web of Science Researcher Profile (and separately, to Scopus) — means new publications need to be verified in fewer places, and citation/h-index figures pulled for review purposes are traceable back to a specific, connected source system rather than to a researcher manually re-entering the same publication list three times.
Metrics are not interchangeable across systems. An h-index or citation count reported from a Web of Science Researcher Profile reflects Web of Science’s own indexed coverage (the Core Collection plus whichever regional/specialty indices an institution subscribes to) and will differ from the same metric computed by Scopus or Google Scholar, because each draws on a different underlying citation graph. See Scopus vs Web of Science vs OpenAlex for how the three differ on coverage and metrics.

ResearcherID vs. other author identifiers

ResearcherID/Web of Science Researcher Profile is one of several vendor- or registry-specific author identifiers a research administrator will encounter alongside a researcher’s ORCID iD:

ORCID iD — open, non-profit, cross-publisher, portable for a researcher’s career.
ResearcherID (Web of Science Researcher Profile) — Clarivate-proprietary, scoped to Web of Science and InCites.
Scopus Author ID — Elsevier-proprietary, algorithmically assigned within Scopus, scoped to that database.

None of the three is a substitute for another; each is meaningful only within, or explicitly connected to, its own governing system.

Related CASRAI resources

ORCID iD — the open, cross-publisher persistent identifier ResearcherID now syncs with.
Web of Science — the Clarivate platform a Web of Science Researcher Profile (and its ResearcherID) belongs to.
Scopus — Elsevier’s competing database, with its own independent Scopus Author ID.
h-index and Journal Impact Factor — metrics a Web of Science Researcher Profile surfaces.
How to Register, Find, and Search for ORCID iDs and Identifier Crosswalk: DOI, ORCID, ROR & CRIS — practical guides on managing identifiers across systems.
Persistent Identifiers & Research Information Systems — the CASRAI cluster hub for this topic.

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="ResearcherID"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/researcherid" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/researcherid",
  "name": "ResearcherID",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/researcherid",
  "description": "ResearcherID is Clarivate's proprietary author identifier for the Web of Science ecosystem: a unique alphanumeric code (format letter(s)-numbers-year) assigned when a researcher creates a Web of Science Researcher Profile, used to disambiguate that person's publications and citation metrics within Web of Science and InCites. Since Clarivate retired Publons as a separate product in April 2022, ResearcherID exists as the identifier component of the unified Web of Science Researcher Profile rather than a standalone product, and (once a researcher explicitly connects the two accounts) two-way syncs publications with a connected ORCID iD.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-info-systems#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/researcherid",
  "sameAs": [],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-18T06:29:49",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}