A persistent identifier for research organisations issued by the Research Organization Registry (ROR), expressed as an HTTPS URI of the form https://ror.org/0xxxxxxxx where the final nine-character path component is a base32-encoded random value with a check digit.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 10 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
https://ror.org/0130frc33 for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Is an instance
https://ror.org/02jx3x895 for University of Edinburgh.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A university's homepage URL is not a ROR ID.
Not an instance
A WikiData QID for the same organisation is a separate identifier system, not a ROR ID.

Editorial commentary

ROR is a free, community-led registry of research organisations launched in 2019 to fill the gap left by the legacy GRID database, of which it took over a deduplicated snapshot. Each ROR record carries the organisation’s canonical name, aliases, labels in multiple languages, country, geographic location, organisation type, parent/child/related relationships, and crosswalks to other identifiers (GRID, ISNI, Wikidata, Crossref Funder ID, Fundref). The identifier itself is opaque and not parseable.

References

Lammey R. et al., 'Research Organization Registry (ROR): A New Open Identifier for Research Organizations' (ror.org).
Cruse P., Haak L., Pentz E., 'A community approach to open infrastructure: organization identifiers' (2019 white paper).

Also known as

Research Organization Registry identifier

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="ROR ID"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ror-id" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ror-id",
  "name": "ROR ID",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ror-id",
  "description": "A persistent identifier for research organisations issued by the Research Organization Registry (ROR), expressed as an HTTPS URI of the form https://ror.org/0xxxxxxxx where the final nine-character path component is a base32-encoded random value with a check digit.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/persistent-identifiers#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ror-id",
  "sameAs": [
    "Research Organization Registry identifier"
  ],
  "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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