Web of Science ResearcherID: How to Get One and How It Compares With ORCID

Search interest in Web of Science ResearcherID has been climbing this autumn, and the questions behind it are usually practical. A postdoc is asked for a ResearcherID on a grant form. A co-author has two profiles and wants to know which one to keep. A journal submission system offers a field for an author identifier and the author is not sure whether to fill it in with a ResearcherID, an ORCID iD, or both.

The short answer is that ORCID is the identifier most journals and funders recognize across publishers, and a Web of Science profile is a useful companion rather than a replacement. The longer answer depends on how the identifiers were created, how they connect, and whether your target journal asks for one or the other. This guide walks through all three, with the caveat that the operational steps described here come from university library guidance and may change as the platform is updated.

Where ResearcherID Came From

ResearcherID started as a Thomson Reuters service in the late 2000s, aimed at solving a problem that bibliographic databases had long struggled with: the same person appears under several spellings, initials and institutional affiliations, and citation counts split across those variants. An author with a common surname in a large field could find that a citation report undercounted their work by a wide margin. The ResearcherID gave each person a single code that a database could attach to their papers.

The service then changed shape more than once. Several university library guides describe the same sequence. In 2019, ResearcherID was folded into Publons, the peer review and profile platform that the parent company had acquired, and existing ResearcherIDs were carried across to matching Publons profiles. Publons was then absorbed into Web of Science itself around 2022, and the profile was renamed the Web of Science Researcher Profile. Older numbers in the letter-digits-year format still appear on many papers, grant applications and CVs, and they still resolve to a profile.

The practical point for an author is that you may have a ResearcherID, a Publons profile, or a Web of Science Researcher Profile, or some combination, and they are not always the same record. Before you create anything new, search for yourself first. Duplicate profiles are the most common mess this history leaves behind.

What ORCID Does That ResearcherID Does Not

ORCID is a non-profit registry that issues a persistent 16-digit identifier to individual researchers, free of charge. Its design goal is independence from any single database or publisher. Your ORCID iD is a stable link you can place on a manuscript, a grant application, a preprint, a funder report or a personal website, and it stays the same whichever journals you publish in and whichever company owns the indexing services you use.

That independence is the main reason publishers and funders have converged on ORCID. Many journal submission systems ask for an ORCID iD for the corresponding author, and some ask for it for every author. Funders such as large national research councils use it to link grant outputs to people. A Web of Science profile, by contrast, is tied to a single commercial index. It is useful for tracking papers within that index, but a journal in a different database, or a funder reporting system, will not read it as a neutral identity.

It is worth being precise about what ICMJE says. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors publishes recommendations on authorship, conflicts of interest and reporting that many medical journals adopt. Secondary summaries of its January 2026 update mention new material on AI and data access, but none of the sources I could reach describe an ORCID requirement in the recommendations themselves, so this article does not treat one as settled. Requirements for identifiers live mainly in individual journal instructions and submission systems, so read the target journal's own author guidelines rather than assuming an identifier is mandatory across medicine.

Linking the Two Identifiers Without Creating a Duplicate

A common misunderstanding is that linking a Web of Science profile to ORCID merges the two into one identifier. It does not. Library guides consistently describe the relationship as a link between two distinct records. You keep your ORCID iD and your Web of Science Researcher Profile or ResearcherID as separate things, and the connection lets each platform show the other's identifier and, where you allow it, exchange publication data.

The direction and frequency of that exchange is the part that deserves attention. Some guidance describes the sync as running in both directions, so that a paper added to ORCID can appear in the Web of Science profile and the reverse. Other descriptions emphasize that updates flow according to the permissions you grant, and that you can review or revoke them. Because the details have changed over time, read the permission screen during the connection step rather than relying on a screenshot from an old guide. Make a note of what you authorized, so that a later change does not surprise you.

The more important rule is to link once. If you connect a second Web of Science profile to the same ORCID iD, or connect one profile to two ORCID records, your publication list splits. Editors and funders who look you up may find some papers under one identifier and some under the other, and the citation counts you see in each place will not agree. Tidy the duplicate before you add anything new.

How to Claim a Web of Science Researcher Profile

The sequence below reflects the steps that several university library guides describe. Interface labels change, so treat the names of menus as approximate and follow what is on screen.

1. Search for your own name in the Web of Science author search, and add your institution and a known paper to narrow the results. Note every profile that looks like yours, including any older ResearcherID or Publons entry.
2. If an existing profile is yours, open it and choose the option to claim the record. You may be asked to confirm which publications belong to you. Confirm only the papers you actually wrote.
3. If no profile exists, create one from the Researcher Profile area. Add your current institution, your name variants and the papers you are sure of, and leave out anything uncertain.
4. Open the profile settings, go to the ORCID syncing tab and choose to connect. You will be sent to ORCID to sign in and authorize the connection.
5. Review the permissions you granted, then check that your ORCID record now shows the ResearcherID in its other identifiers section.

Once the profile is live, spend ten minutes on the publication list. Remove papers that are not yours, confirm the ones that are, and check the affiliations on the most recent three or four publications. Affiliation errors are easy to miss and they matter, because they feed into institutional reporting.

Which Identifier Your Manuscript Needs

Most medical submission systems ask for an ORCID iD in the author details, and many will not let you finish a submission without one for the corresponding author. A Web of Science Researcher Profile is rarely requested directly. When a journal asks for a ResearcherID, it is usually because the editorial office is cross-checking publication history in that index. In those cases, a linked and tidy profile is what you want, and the ORCID iD still goes in the field the system provides.

Grant applications work similarly. Funders increasingly want an ORCID iD for each investigator so that outputs can be linked to the award. Some grant forms also ask for a ResearcherID, particularly when the sponsoring institution uses Web of Science for its research reporting. Check the specific form, because the wording varies between funders and between application cycles.

Why Names and Affiliations Matter More Than the Identifier

An identifier is only as good as the record it points to. Editors who check a corresponding author often search by name first and then look for an identifier to confirm the match. If the name on the manuscript is Anna M. Ortega, the ORCID record says Anna Ortega, and the Web of Science profile says A. M. Ortega at an older hospital, the editor has to do detective work. That delay is small, but it is the sort of friction that editorial offices remember.

Choose one way of writing your name and use it everywhere: on the manuscript, in the submission system, in ORCID and in the Web of Science profile. Add the variants to the name fields, rather than leaving them for the database to guess. If you have changed institutions, update the affiliation in ORCID first, because many other systems pull from it.

This also matters for the acknowledgements and contribution statements. An author who appears in the author list with one name and in the contributions statement with another makes the record harder to audit later. Our guide on credit and contribution statements covers that side of the problem in more detail.

What to Do Before Your Next Submission

If you are starting from scratch, the order matters. Create or claim your ORCID iD first, because it is the identifier with the widest acceptance. Then find any existing ResearcherID or Publons profile and claim it rather than creating a new one. Link the Web of Science profile to ORCID once, check the permissions, and clean the publication list. Only after all of that should you enter identifiers into a submission system.

Co-authors who have never registered should not be left to sort this out in the final hour. Ask each person to confirm their ORCID iD two weeks before submission, and ask the corresponding author to check that the author list in the submission system matches the manuscript. Editorial offices handle a large number of incomplete author records, and a missing identifier can hold a file in administrative limbo while the rest of the paper waits.

The honest limitation is that platforms change, and the exact menus and sync behavior described in library guides may not match what you see today. Confirm the current steps against the platform's own help pages, and read the identifier instructions in the target journal's author guidelines before you submit. Those two checks will catch most of the problems this topic creates.

Further Reading