Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A researcher who retired from a university continues an unpaid 'Emeritus Professor' role there: entered as an ORCID invited position with organisation name and ROR ID, department, role/title 'Emeritus Professor', a start date, and no end date.
- Is an instance
A researcher spends one academic term as a paid 'Visiting Lecturer' at a second institution while remaining employed at their home institution: entered as a separate ORCID invited position with its own start and end dates spanning the term, alongside (not replacing) their ORCID employment record at the home institution.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A standing, ongoing job — even one with an honorific-sounding title — belongs under ORCID employment, not invited position; invited position is for a role the person is invited into elsewhere, not their regular post.
- Not an instance
An honorary degree, award, or fellowship recognising past achievement with no associated ongoing role belongs under ORCID's separate 'distinction' affiliation type, not invited position, even though ORCID's entry form presents the two together in one section.
- Not an instance
Serving on an editorial board, grant review panel, or professional-society committee is recorded under ORCID's separate 'service' affiliation type, not invited position — service covers professional activity contributed to an organisation, not a position held at it.
Editorial commentary
ORCID’s data model separates “invited position” from ordinary employment. It covers a paid or unpaid role a researcher is invited into at an organisation other than (or in addition to) their primary employer — a visiting lectureship, a guest-researcher appointment, or an emeritus professorship — rather than a standing job. As with other affiliation types, each entry can be self-asserted or, if the organisation is a “trusted party” on the ORCID Member API, asserted directly by the organisation, and can carry a disambiguated organisation identifier (typically a ROR ID) alongside department, role/title, start date, and optional end date.
In ORCID’s web entry form, “invited position” and “distinction” share a single combined entry section (“Invited position or distinction”), which is a common source of confusion. In the underlying ORCID record schema (and the ORCID API/XML), they remain two separate affiliation-type values: invited-position is an actual role held, while distinction records an honorary award or recognition with no associated role. A CRIS or research-information system consuming ORCID data via the API needs to read the affiliation-type field itself to tell them apart, not just the section a human sees on orcid.org.
Where invited position sits among ORCID’s seven affiliation types
An ORCID iD record supports exactly seven distinct affiliation types: employment, education, qualification, invited position, distinction, membership, and service. Invited position is deliberately narrower than employment (it is a role held elsewhere, typically without becoming the person’s primary institutional record) and narrower than service (which covers committee, editorial-board, or reviewing roles rather than a position held at an organisation) and narrower than distinction (an honour received, with no associated role at all).
Who can assert an invited-position entry
By default, only the ORCID record holder can add or edit an affiliation entry. An organisation that is a registered ORCID member and has been granted permission by the individual (through the standard ORCID OAuth consent flow) can assert an invited-position entry directly via the Member API, which then displays a “source” attribution identifying the asserting organisation on the public record — this is the mechanism a CRIS integration typically relies on to keep a visiting-scholar or honorary-appointment record synchronised with ORCID rather than depending on the individual to self-report it.
Why a research office cares
Invited-position entries are one of the more direct signals of profile completeness and affiliation accuracy that a research office can act on: they surface visiting researchers, emeritus staff still active in named projects, and honorary appointees who may not appear in a standard HR employment feed but who do need to be captured for authorship affiliation, grant eligibility, or research-security review purposes. Because the entry can carry a disambiguated ROR ID for the host organisation, it also supports cleaner cross-institution bibliometric attribution than free-text affiliation strings on a manuscript alone.
Frequently asked questions
Is an ORCID invited position the same as an honorary degree?
No. An honorary degree or award with no associated role is recorded as a “distinction” entry. Invited position specifically means the person holds (or held) an actual role — a title, a set of duties, typically a start date — at the inviting organisation.
Can a visiting professorship and a primary employment both appear on one ORCID record?
Yes. A researcher’s primary job is recorded under “employment”; a concurrent or subsequent visiting/guest role at a different organisation is recorded separately under “invited position,” and both can be visible on the same record at the same time.
Does an invited-position entry require an end date?
No. The end date field is optional, which allows an ongoing or open-ended appointment (such as many emeritus roles) to be recorded without an artificial closure date.
References
- ORCID Record data model — ORCID Integration & Help Center (info.orcid.org/documentation/integration-guide/orcid-record/).
- ‘Metadata in the Invited Position or Distinction Section’ — ORCID Support (support.orcid.org).
Also known as
ORCID affiliation (invited position) · Invited position (ORCID)
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="ORCID Invited Position"
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"publisher": {
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},
"datePublished": "2026-07-10T01:46:57",
"dateModified": "2026-09-04T06:39:46",
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