Posted on behalf of Brendan Maher.

A registry that will grant researchers a unique identifying number — helping readers of the literature to distinguish between authors with similar names — launches today. ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID, is supported by funds and input from member institutions, publishers (including Nature Publishing Group) and scientific societies. It should integrate with existing researcher identification systems and make it easier for universities and funding agencies to track scientists’ output (see ‘Scientists: your number is up‘). Researchers can register at www.orcid.org and add information about their publications to their ORCID records.