ORCID and ISNI: Complementary Identifiers in the Open Science and Publishing Industry Ecosystems

GAELLE BEQUET, Director, International Standard Serial Number International Centre
TODD CARPENTER, Executive Director, National Information Standards Organization

Persistent identifiers have become essential infrastructures in the global research landscape, ensuring the reliable identification of documents, data, and contributors. Among the various identifiers in use today, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) and the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) play crucial roles in identifying people. Both serve to disambiguate identities in scholarly communication, yet they originate from distinct contexts and address partially overlapping communities. ORCID and ISNI are complementary systems that, when integrated, strengthen the reliability and inclusiveness of the scholarly record.

ORCID: A Community-Led Identifier for Researchers

ORCID was established in 2010 as a non-profit initiative driven by publishers, funders, and research organizations. Its primary objective is to support the creation of a “permanent, clear, and unambiguous record of research and scholarly communication by enabling reliable attribution of authors and contributors.” The ORCID registry, launched in 2012, assigns unique identifiers to researchers and links them to their affiliations, works, and contributions. By enabling interoperability with systems such as CrossRef and DataCite, ORCID supports the traceability of research outputs across disciplines and platforms.

Critically, ORCID has been widely adopted by publishers and funders who often require researchers to register for an ORCID iD to submit manuscripts or apply for grants. This has accelerated its growth, making it a central pivot to the use of platforms in science communication. However, concerns have been raised regarding privacy, freedom of research, and the handling of sensitive personal data, particularly under frameworks such as the European GDPR.

ISNI: An ISO Standard for Names Across Creative Domains

In contrast, ISNI emerged from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), with the standard published in 2012 as ISO 27729. Initially conceived to serve the needs of the rights management agencies and library communities, ISNI was designed to identify not only researchers but also authors, performers, organizations, and other entities within the cultural and creative industries. Managed by a registration authority, ISNI draws on authority files from libraries and copyright agencies, thereby grounding itself in institutional infrastructures.

Unlike ORCID, ISNI is more inclusive in scope, covering both natural and legal persons, including pseudonyms, fictitious personas, corporations of various types, and group identities. Its foundation in ISO standardization lends it legitimacy within the broader framework of information and documentation standards.

Importantly, ISNI’s use cases extend far beyond the scholarly record. While ORCID is tightly focused on documenting the contributions of active researchers, ISNI applies to a much broader spectrum of cultural and creative actors, including musicians, filmmakers, visual artists, organizations, and even pseudonyms. This universality enables ISNI to serve multiple industries simultaneously—from library authority control to copyright management—making it a versatile identifier system with wider applicability than ORCID.

Complementarity and Interoperability

ORCID and ISNI share similar technical architectures as both use 16-digit identifiers with harmonized syntax. ORCID has emphasized its bottom-up, community-led model, while ISNI reflects a top-down, institutionally anchored approach. Despite this, since 2014, both organizations have acknowledged their complementarity through a Memorandum of Understanding, which allocated a block of ISNI identifiers for ORCID’s use. This ensures that the two systems are not assigning the same identifier string to two different personas, although they can have both an ISNI and an ORCID that are different identifier strings.

In practice, ORCID specializes in the active research community, whereas ISNI provides broader coverage of names across cultural sectors. Therefore, researchers may be assigned both identifiers, which can be linked to ensure interoperability. This duality enhances the reliability of identification systems by combining ORCID’s focus on current research outputs with ISNI’s comprehensive coverage of identities across domains.

The complementarity of ORCID and ISNI lies in their scope, governance, and methods of trust:

• SCOPE: ORCID addresses the dynamic needs of active researchers, integrating tightly into scholarly publishing and funding workflows. ISNI, by contrast, captures a wider universe of identities—including non-academic creators, inactive researchers, and organizations—thus situating researchers within the broader cultural landscape.
• GOVERNANCE: Both ORCID and ISNI are non-profit organizations that serve the public interest. ORCID reflects a bottom-up initiative driven by members of the scholarly community. ORCID is governed by a Board of Directors selected through voting by members of its community and seeks to be broadly representative. The ISNI International Agency is also governed by a Board of Directors, whose members are selected from the limited number of ISNI registration agencies. The ISNI registration authority is also governed by ISO procedures and is subject to contractual obligations to the ISO Central Secretariat. This provides regular oversight of the authority's activities.
• TRUST: Each system relies on distinct approaches to ensuring trust in the system. ORCID reflects a bottom-up initiative driven by members of the scholarly community. Identity within the ORCID system is self-asserted and self-managed, using trust markers and external validation of information (assertions) related to a record, such as employment or publication. ISNI represents a top-down standardization effort anchored in ISO procedures and library authority files. Within the ISNI system, identity is managed by external parties based on published or publicly available data, such as cataloging or business records to ensure accuracy.  Their coexistence ensures that both grassroots adoption and institutional standardization contribute to the reliability of global identification.

In the evolving ecosystem of open science, persistent identifiers serve as keystones of transparency, interoperability, and accountability. ORCID and ISNI illustrate two distinct but complementary approaches to researcher identification: one community-led and research-focused, the other standardized and cross-sectoral. Their integration not only reduces ambiguity in scholarly communication but also bridges academic and cultural domains. ISNI’s wider applicability beyond academia strengthens the reliability of name identification across industries, while ORCID ensures precision within the scholarly record. Strengthening their interoperability is thus crucial for building a robust and inclusive infrastructure for global knowledge sharing.

GAELLE BEQUET is an information management expert with over 20-years of experience in information science and library services. Since 2014, she has served as Director of the International ISSN Centre, an intergovernmental organization that coordinates the global ISSN Network for identifying serial publications and journals. Under her leadership, the ISSN Portal has become a key infrastructure supporting academic libraries and research worldwide.

She specializes in developing innovative information services, fostering international collaboration, and advancing intercultural communication. Passionate about digital libraries and open access to scientific resources, Gaelle holds a Ph.D. in Information Science from Sorbonne Nouvelle University – Paris 3, where she researched the history of digital libraries in Europe.

TODD CARPENTER joined the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) as Executive Director in September 2006. In this role, Todd provides leadership to NISO as well as focuses on improving constituency relationships, standards development, and operational procedures. Prior to joining NISO, Todd was Director of Business Development with BioOne, where he served the goals of both libraries and publishers by enhancing products, services, and distribution. Previously, Todd directed the marketing of approximately 60 academic journals and was closely involved in the growth of Project MUSE at the Johns Hopkins University Press. He has also held marketing and business development positions at the Energy Intelligence Group, a news service covering the oil and natural gas industries, and the Haworth Press, an academic and professional publisher.