A 16-digit persistent identifier, expressed as four hyphen-separated blocks (e.g. 0000-0002-1825-0097) and resolvable as an HTTPS URI under https://orcid.org/, that uniquely identifies an individual researcher across publications, datasets, grants, employments, and peer-review activity.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 10 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
0000-0002-1825-0097 (Josiah Carberry, ORCID's mascot test record).
Is an instance
An ORCID iD asserted in a Crossref deposit alongside an author name to disambiguate two authors who share a surname.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A local institutional staff ID such as 'u123456' is not an ORCID iD because it has no global scope and no check digit.
Not an instance
An email address is not an ORCID iD; emails change over a career while the ORCID iD is intended to persist.

Editorial commentary

The ORCID iD is the public-facing identifier minted by ORCID for each registered person. Its final character is an ISO 7064 MOD 11-2 check digit (which may be the literal ‘X’ to represent the value 10). The iD is intentionally opaque (no embedded semantics) and is intended to remain stable for the lifetime of the researcher and beyond. Resolution of the HTTPS form returns either the public profile page (in a browser) or, with content negotiation, the ORCID record in JSON-LD, XML, or RDF.

References

ORCID Inc., 'Structure of the ORCID Identifier' (orcid.org support documentation).
ISO 7064:2003, Information technology — Security techniques — Check character systems.

Also known as

ORCID identifier · ORCID number

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

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

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/orcid-id",
  "name": "ORCID iD",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/orcid-id",
  "description": "A 16-digit persistent identifier, expressed as four hyphen-separated blocks (e.g. 0000-0002-1825-0097) and resolvable as an HTTPS URI under https://orcid.org/, that uniquely identifies an individual researcher across publications, datasets, grants, employments, and peer-review activity.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/persistent-identifiers#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/orcid-id",
  "sameAs": [
    "ORCID identifier",
    "ORCID number"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-10T02:10:35",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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