Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A publisher requesting /read-limited scope at submission so the manuscript system can pre-fill the corresponding author's affiliations from their ORCID record.
- Is an instance
A funder POSTing a /funding item to a successful applicant's ORCID record after award notification.
- Is an instance
A research office reading only publicly visible works via the free Public API, with no membership or scope required.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Scraping the public HTML profile page of an ORCID record is not 'using the ORCID API'.
- Not an instance
An internal copy of ORCID data refreshed from the annual public data file is not the ORCID API.
Editorial commentary
The ORCID API is the two-tier REST interface ORCID Inc. operates for reading and, with authorisation, writing ORCID record data. The Public API is free to use and supports OAuth authentication for read-public access and for collecting authenticated iDs during sign-in. The Member API is restricted to paying ORCID member organisations and additionally supports read-limited access (items the record holder has made visible to trusted parties) and read/update/delete access to activities, gated by a researcher-granted OAuth scope token specific to that organisation.
Versioning and endpoints
Both API tiers are versioned — the current major version is 3.0 — and expose endpoints for /record, /works, /employments, /educations, /qualifications, /fundings, /peer-reviews, and related affiliation and activity types, each returning or accepting the corresponding record item’s structured metadata.
How Member API access is normally obtained
An organisation becomes eligible for Member API credentials by holding ORCID membership, either purchased directly or through an ORCID consortium. Public API access requires no membership at all — it is the layer available to any developer or system that only needs public record data.
How this differs from ORCID record permissions
The API tier and record permissions are two separate, orthogonal controls that are easy to conflate. The API tier determines what an integration is technically capable of requesting — public-only, or limited/update with a granted scope; record permissions determine what a specific researcher has actually chosen to make visible on a specific item. A Member API integration with a valid update scope still cannot see an item the researcher has marked private, and a Public API caller cannot see a limited-visibility item regardless of tier.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to be an ORCID member to read public ORCID data?
No — the Public API is free and requires no membership, only OAuth authentication for the calling application.
What does ‘auto-update’ mean in the context of the API?
Auto-update is a Member API capability that lets an authorised trusted organisation push new or updated work assertions to a researcher’s record automatically — for example, when a publisher deposits a new article’s metadata to Crossref referencing a known ORCID iD — rather than requiring the researcher to manually search-and-link each new item.
References
- ORCID Inc., ‘ORCID API Documentation v3.0’ (members.orcid.org/api).
Also known as
ORCID REST API
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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