Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
ISNI 0000 0001 2103 2683 (Stephen Hawking).
- Is an instance
An ISNI assigned to an academic publisher's corporate identity for music-licensing or library-cataloguing crosswalks.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A library's local authority record number (LCCN) is not an ISNI.
- Not an instance
A researcher's email address is not an ISNI.
- Not an instance
An ORCID iD is not automatically an ISNI, even though ORCID reserves an ISNI block for its own registrants — the two registries and identifiers remain distinct.
Editorial commentary
ISNI is the ISO-standardised identifier for ‘public identities’ across creative and research sectors. Each ISNI is a 16-digit number, often presented in four groups of four (e.g. 0000 0001 2103 2683), with a final MOD-11 check digit. The registry is large (millions of records) and ingests name authority data from national libraries, music industry sources, and ORCID. An individual researcher’s ORCID iD and ISNI may both exist; the ISNI block 0000-0001-5000-0007 through 0000-0003-5000-0001 is reserved for ORCID-issued iDs that have a corresponding ISNI.
Who registers an ISNI and why it’s broader than research
Unlike ORCID, which exists specifically for researchers and other contributors to scholarly and research work, ISNI covers the entire creative-content supply chain: authors, performers, researchers, directors, producers, and the organisations behind them (publishers, labels, broadcasters, universities). Registration Agencies — national libraries, collective management organisations, and other bodies accredited by the ISNI International Agency — assign ISNIs, typically by disambiguating name-authority data already held for cataloguing or rights-management purposes rather than through direct self-registration by individuals.
ISNI vs. ORCID vs. ROR
These three identifiers are easy to conflate because they can describe the same person or organisation, but they serve different registries and purposes: ORCID is purpose-built for individual researchers and integrates directly with manuscript-submission and grant systems; ISNI is a broader, ISO-governed identity layer spanning creative industries as well as research, with ORCID as one contributing data source; ROR (Research Organization Registry) identifies institutions specifically for the scholarly-research use case, distinct from ISNI’s organisation identities. A given researcher may hold both an ORCID iD and an ISNI, cross-linked but independently issued.
References
- ISO 27729:2012, Information and documentation — International standard name identifier (ISNI).
- ISNI International Agency, ‘How ISNI works’ (isni.org).
Also known as
International Standard Name Identifier · ISO 27729 identifier
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="ISNI"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/isni" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/isni",
"name": "ISNI",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/isni",
"description": "International Standard Name Identifier (ISO 27729), a 16-digit identifier for the public identity of a person or organisation involved in the creation, production, management, or distribution of content, administered by the ISNI International Agency.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/persistent-identifiers#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/isni",
"sameAs": [
"International Standard Name Identifier",
"ISO 27729 identifier"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-21T02:09:14",
"dateModified": "2026-08-22T15:38:16",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
