Institutions that actively manage their researchers’ ORCID records achieve better results in global rankings — that is the main finding of a joint study by ORCID and the SCImago Research Group, whose results were presented at an ORCID Special Report webinar.
The analysis drew on data from nearly 9 million researcher profiles and 13 million affiliations from more than 9,000 institutions worldwide. The study’s authors — Paloma Marín-Arraiza from ORCID and Gali Halevi from the SCImago Research Group — examined the extent to which institutional management of ORCID records correlates with greater research visibility, impact, and institutional standing in international evaluations.
The results showed that the strongest association exists between institutional affiliation confirmation and the societal impact of research, followed by scientific impact. The weakest correlation was found in innovation rankings. A key concept in the study is the notion of trust markers — institutionally verified metadata that, unlike data entered by researchers themselves, form a reliable and machine-readable layer of trustworthy information.
The study also confirmed significant regional differences in ORCID adoption rates. Western Europe, North America, and the Pacific region show markedly higher levels of engagement compared to Asia, Latin America, and Africa. According to the authors, these disparities in the representation of research activity in the digital environment may deepen inequalities in the visibility of science across the world.
The webinar concluded with practical recommendations: for institutions, simply implementing ORCID is not enough — the key to measurable benefits is systematic, institutionally managed data governance, which ensures the correct attribution of research outputs and increases the analytical potential of data for strategic institutional management.