ORCID: Solving the Name Ambiguity Problem

Many scholars have published their work under multiple names for various reasons, and many share the same full name. With the increased presence of scholars’ names on various publishing, personal, and institutional Web sites, as well as social networks, it has become crucial to solve the problem of ambiguity in identifying author names and works associated with them. ORCID is a nonprofit organization that created a tool for individuals to register and obtain an ORCID ID. Individuals can store all their aliases under their ORCID profile and share their ORCID ID with publishers, funding agencies, and associations. It is a solution to the author ambiguity problem that is supported globally by academic institutions, government agencies, publishers, and associations.