1. Introduction
About ORCID
Who we are:
- Non-profit
- Open source project (ORCID Github repository)
- Committed international community
Our goal:
All who participate in research, scholarship, and innovation are uniquely identified and connected to their contributions across disciplines, borders, and time.
What we provide:
- Persistent digital identifier for researchers (ORCID iD):
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5727-2427 - Registry of those identifiers + their connections to affiliations and research activities
- APIs for creating/retrieving metadata about connections between people, affiliations and research activities
Why?
- Help people find information (like all of a researcher's publications)
- Simplify reporting and analysis (by providing a central source for info about researcher's affilations and activiteis)
- Reduce time spent filling out forms (by providing a source for autopopulating form fields)
ORCID doesn't do this on its own - integrations with other systems (like manuscript submission/production, funding application, repository, research information, and directory systems) are essential.
About the ORCID APIs
ORCID's web interface gives researchers a way to interact with their record, but the real power of ORCID lies in the underlying data, which can be accessed by people and systems via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
- Public API: Free to anyone with an ORCID iD
- Basic Member API: Available to ORCID member organizations who subscribe at the Basic level (Sandbox Member API freely available for testing)
- Premium Member API: Available to ORCID member organizations who subscribed at the Premium level (Sandbox Premium Member API freely available for testing)
Learn more about membership levels
| Features | Public | Basic Member | Premium Member |
|---|---|---|---|
| READ Read data ORCID records |
X Public data |
X Public + limited-access data (with user permission) |
X Public + limited-access data (with user permission) |
| SEARCH Search data on ORCID records |
X Public data |
X Public data |
X Public data |
| AUTHENTICATE Get a user's authenticated ORCID iD |
X | X | X |
| UPDATE Add items to a record or update items you added previously |
X | X | |
| WEBHOOKS Get notifications when ORCID records you're monitoring are updated |
X |
All of the ORCID APIs are based on the same set of technologies:
- REST: ORCID APIs are “RESTful”, which means that they use HTTP to transfer information.
- OAuth: ORCID APIs use the OAuth 2.0 authentication protocol to grant client applications access to users’ ORCID records.
- XML/JSON: ORCID APIs support data exchange in either XML or JSON format.
Learn more about the ORCID APIs
Pre-requisites
To complete this tutorial, you'll need the following tools:
- Web browser: Firefox (33+), Chrome (38+), Internet Explorer (10+), Safari (6+)
- Internet connection
- Plain text editor: TextEdit (Mac), Notepad++ (Win), or your preferred plain text editor
- Software capable of making HTTP requests:
- cURL: Free, command-line application available for Mac or Windows (pre-installed on most Mac OS versions; accessible within Terminal application)
- GUI tools, like Postman, Google OAuth Playground or hurl.it
Examples in this tutorial use Postman