ORCID is the hub; databases have their own IDs too

The big citation databases assign their own author identifiers. The two main ones:

  • Web of Science Researcher Profile — Clarivate’s profile that tracks your Web of Science–indexed publications, citations, and peer-review record. Note: this profile absorbed the former Publons and ResearcherID services in 2023, so those older names now point here.
  • Scopus Author ID — automatically generated by Elsevier’s Scopus when you publish in an indexed journal; it clusters your indexed works and citation metrics.
Worked example — three IDs, one hub
Dr Bello has an ORCID iD (universal, self-managed), a Scopus Author ID (auto-assigned by Scopus), and a Web of Science Researcher Profile. She connects all three to her ORCID, so updating one keeps the others in sync — instead of maintaining three separate identities by hand.

🔗 Learn more (free): Web of Science — Researcher Profiles

Try it
Search your name (or a known author in your field) in Web of Science or Scopus. Is there an author profile already? Auto-generated profiles often exist before researchers claim them.

Self-check

Why connect your Scopus and Web of Science IDs to your ORCID rather than maintaining each one separately?

© FRELIP, released under CC BY 4.0. Adapted in part from openly-licensed UNESCO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) and institutional research-support materials. Linked resources remain under their own licences. Curated by the FRELIP Open Courseware editorial team.

Modifié le: jeudi 4 juin 2026, 12:41