The Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) authority control system assigns unique identifier numbers to authors. This enables users to positively verify the identity of individual authors, even in circumstances that may ordinarily create significant ambiguity or confusion—such as when an author changes or uses different forms of their name during their career, or when multiple authors with the same name are likely to be confused with one another.
ORCID identifiers are primarily used in three places on Wikipedia: in biographical articles, on user pages, and in citations.