About the ORCID APIs

ORCID offers several APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow your systems to connect to the ORCID registry, including reading from and writing to ORCID records. Some API functions are freely available to anyone; others are only available to ORCID member organizations, which also benefit from email and webinar support from our Community team. We encourage all organizations using ORCID - members and non-members - to join our API Users Group, where you can ask questions and learn about new technical developments.

A basic chart of the differences between the ORCID APIs is set out below. A more in-depth chart is available at our membership information page, which sets out benefits including reporting.

API types & features

Each tier of the API can do all of the things that the previous tier can do.   
 

API

Features

Public API
Freely available to anyone with an ORCID iD
  1. Authenticate: Get a user’s authenticated ORCID iD
  2. Read (Public): Read public data on ORCID records
  3. Create: Help researchers register for an ORCID iD using our create-on-demand process

Member API
ORCID member organizations
(Sandbox test environment freely available to anyone)
  1. Read (Limited): Read limited-access data on ORCID records
  2. Add: Post new items to a record
  3. Update: Edit or delete items you previously added
  4. One integration (client credentials)

Premium Member API
Premium ORCID member organizations
(Sandbox test environment freely available to anyone)
  1. Webhooks: Receive notifications of updates to your users' ORCID records
  2. Up to five integrations (client credentials)

The ORCID APIs are RESTful

The ORCID APIs are RESTful and use OAuth 2.0, a well-established, standard protocol for user-based permissions.

REST

The ORCID APIs are RESTful in that they use a base URL and standard HTTP methods to exchange data. For a reference to the HTTP calls used in the ORCID APIs, see the ORCID API Calls in our GitHub. (Note: Our GitHub examples include calls for all ORCID APIs. The public API will only be able to use the calls to read and search information on the ORCID Registry.)

If you're new to REST, you may want to watch the video What is REST? and other tutorials available from Rest API Tutorial.

OAuth 2.0

OAuth 2.0 is an authorization protocol which is used in many web applications. For more information about how ORCID APIs use OAuth, see our OAuth information pages.