ORCID, which stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID, is a free, unique, persistent identifier (PID) for individuals to use as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities. ORCID is provided to researchers free of charge so to realize the ORCID organization’s vision that all who participate in research, scholarship, and innovation are uniquely identified and connected to their contributions across disciplines, borders, and time.
It aims to resolve the problem of distinguishing the contributions of different authors in cases of homonyms, changing surnames, different abbreviations of given names, or transliterations from different writing systems. It provides a stable identifier for individuals, comparable to the role played by Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for content.
For futher information visit ORCID website.