The Invited positions and distinctions section of your ORCID record is for information about organizations with which you have a formal relationship – but not an employment – and for details about those relationships. You can add this information to your ORCID record manually, and we also strongly encourage you to grant trusted organizations and trusted individuals permission to add and edit information about your affiliation with them.

1. Introduction
2. Add or edit an invited position or distinction manually
1. Fields in an invited position or distinction affiliation
2. Help, my organization is not in the list!
3. Delete an invited position or distinction

Introduction

Invited positions and Distinctions are types of affiliations on the ORCID record. They describe formal relationships – outside of employment – between a person and an organization, such as a serving as an honorary researcher, a fellow, or being distinguished with an award or honorary degree. Each affiliation includes the organization’s name and location, the date that the affiliation started, and who added the affiliation to your record: you, or a trusted (ORCID member) organization.

We strongly encourage that you allow trusted organizations to add and update your affiliation with them on your ORCID record. The trusted organization will then appear as the source of the information, enabling you and others to be confident that it is authoritative and trustworthy. As ORCID members, trusted organizations are also required to ensure that the information they add is in a format that can be easily shared with other organizations, saving you time when completing forms.

Not sure what affiliation type is right for you? Contact us – we’re happy to provide more information!

Invited position

Choose Invited position for an invited non-employment affiliation. These include formal acknowledgment of your academic effort through honorary titles and/or invited positions that require no special service. They may be paid or unpaid, and you may or may not be based at a different organization.

Examples of invited positions include:

• Honorary fellow
• Fellow member
• Guest researcher
• Emeritus professor
• Visiting lecturer

Distinction

Choose Distinction when you have received honorary and other awards, distinctions, and prizes from an organization in recognition of your academic or other achievements.

Examples of distinctions include:

• Trophies
• Cash prizes
• Non-cash prizes
• Medals
• Honorary degrees
• Honorary member

Add and edit an invited position or distinction manually

To add a new affiliation, sign into your ORCID record, scroll to Add invited position or Add distinction and select Add manually.

In the pop-up, enter the name of the organization in the organization field. As you type it in, our system will automatically suggest options from a pre-populated list. Each organization is associated with one or more organization identifiers; and our system automatically returns the most common version of the organization’s name associated with the most common identifier in our system.

Select an option from this list whenever possible, because it will help improve the accuracy of data on your record, for example when searching ORCID by organization, or when other systems read your ORCID record to add information to their system – such as when you are submitting a manuscript or applying for a grant.

If the name in the pre-populated list is not up to date, or not in the language that you prefer to use on your ORCID record, select the name from the list and then edit the Display organization field to update how the name will appear in your record.

You can edit an invited position or distinction that you, or a trusted individual has added by clicking the edit (pencil) icon at the bottom of each affiliation. Note that affiliations added by trusted organizations can not be edited, however, you can choose who can read information about your invited position or distinctions using the visibility settings.

Fields in an invited position or distinction

The fields in an invited position are:

• Organization (required): The organization you are or were affiliated with
  
  Note: While some organization names include department level listings, we strongly recommend that you pick the highest level of the organization and provide departmental information in the department field.
  
  
• Display organization: The display name of the organization. This is how the organization’s name will appear on your ORCID record. It is automatically filled in based on the organization you selected you can edit this field to change how it will appear on your ORCID record
  
  
• City (required): City where the organization is located. This field is usually automatically filled in when you select an organization
  
  
• State/region: The state/region of the organization
  
  
• Country (required): The country or territory of the organization. This field is usually automatically filled in when you select an organization
  
  
• Department: The subsection, field, or department related to the affiliation. For an invited position, this could be the specific department, e.g. Music Theory
  
  
• Role/title: Be sure to include a descriptive title!
• Invited Position: The name of the position, e.g. Honorary Visiting Scholar
  
  
• Start date: The start date of your relationship with the organization. For example, the date that you started a visiting lectureship, or the date you were awarded an honorary degree.It is strongly encouraged to add at least a year to your invited position to increase veracity
  
  
• End date: The end date of your relationship with the organization. For example, the date that you ended a visiting lectureship. If you are still affiliated with the organization, you do not need to provide an end date
  
  
• URL: A website URL related to your invited position with the organization

The fields in a distinction are:

• Awarding Organization (required): The organization you are or were affiliated with
  
  Note: While some organization names include department level listings, we strongly recommend that you pick the highest level of the organization and provide departmental information in the department field.
  
  
• Display organization: The display name of the organization. This is how the organization’s name will appear on your ORCID record. It is automatically filled in based on the organization you selected you can edit this field to change how it will appear on your ORCID record
  
  
• City (required): City where the organization is located. This field is usually automatically filled in when you select an organization
  
  
• State/region: The state/region of the organization
  
  
• Country (required): The country or territory of the organization. This field is usually automatically filled in when you select an organization
  
  
• Department: The subsection, field, or department related to the affiliation.
  
  
• Distinction/award: Be sure to include a descriptive title!
• Distinction: The awarded prize or distinction name, e.g. Award for Scholarly Distinction
  
  
• Date of distinction/award: For example, the date you were awarded an honorary degree. It is strongly encouraged to add at least a year to your distinction to increase veracity
  

URL: A website URL related to the distinction you were awarded or the organization that awarded it

Help, my organization is not in the list!

Don’t see your organization listed? Don’t worry, it may still be there! You can try entering your organization’s name in another language, as the sources of our organization list may have used the original name or translated name in their listing.

Please note that ORCID does not maintain the list of organizations available to be selected. This list is sourced from the databases in Ringgold, ROR, or Crossref, since they provide unique identifiers to these organizations. If you cannot find your organization's name, please reach out to your institution responsible for contacting these organizations. We regularly update the list of organizations in ORCID based on information from these three databases.

In the meantime, you can manually type in your organization name without selecting from the type-ahead.

Delete an invited position and distinction affiliation

You can delete any affiliation on your ORCID record by signing into your personal ORCID record and selecting the delete icon (trash bin) on the lower right side of the affiliation.

We do not recommend deleting affiliations added by trusted organization. Having affiliations added by trusted organizations allows you to share accurate and authoritative information with other institutions and systems. If the affiliation added is incorrect or out of date, please let us know! We will get in touch with the organization and ask for their help updating your affiliation.