ORCID is an open, non-profit initiative founded by academic institutions, professional bodies, funding agencies, and publishers to resolve authorship confusion in scholarly work. The ORCID repository of unique scholar identification numbers will reliably identify and link scholars in all disciplines with their work, analogous to the way ISBN and DOI identify books and articles.
Brown is a member of ORCID which allows the University, among other things, to create ORCID records on behalf of faculty, students, and affiliated individuals; integrate authenticated ORCID identifiers into grant application processes; ingest ORCID data to maintain internal systems such as institutional repositories; and link ORCID identifiers to other IDs and registry systems. ORCID identifiers will facilitate the gathering of publication, grant, and other data for use in Reseachers@Brown profiles. The library, with long experience in authority control, is coordinating this effort.