Trends in academic media: Open researcher and contributor identifier, concept and significance for the scientific research community

The contemporary scientific communication occurs in a digital environment and in professional virtual communities the concept of science is gradually transforming into the concept of e-science [1]. All participants of the scientific communication have already accepted the existence of Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, as a digital content identifier of some object on the internet which is connected with e.g. a book or a journal article, regardless of the fact that their place on the internet may be changed [2]. The DOI is assigned to a scientific paper via the Crossref service, in order to find, cite, link and access scientific articles more easily. Likewise, steps have been taken to establish the identifier of an author’s unique identity. Back in 2006, Scopus presented its identification scheme Scopus Author IDENTIFIER (ID), and in 2008, Web of Science (WoS) created its own service called ResearcherID, as a system of unique identification of authors [3, 4]. In October 2012, the service Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) was presented. The concept of this service has been introduced back in 2009, with the aim to include all of the previous schemes and create a central registry of unique identifiers of all participants in research, education, science, innovation, i.e. a registry of authors/contributors [5]. ORCID is supposed to provide a long-term international digital identity of researchers [6].