See also the relevant section of our privacy policy, as well as our Trust program web pages.
What happens to the ORCID record of a deceased person?
ORCID records that were created before the person died are maintained as follows:
- All data, visibility settings, permissions granted, Trusted Individuals, and Trusted Organizations remain as set by the record owner
- Trusted Individuals (added by the record owner) may continue to manage the record. This includes modifying data, visibility settings, and permissions granted
- Trusted Organizations may still write/access the record according if they have valid permissions
Is it possible to update/correct information on a record of a deceased person?
Trusted Individuals who have access to the record can modify information after the record-holder’s death. Trusted Organizations with valid permissions may continue to add and update information on the record.
Is it possible to stop ORCID notifications for a deceased person?
Trusted Individuals can modify email and notification preferences. Additionally, whoever has assumed management of the deceased's email account may contact us to stop receiving email notifications.
Is it possible to know if an ORCID iD belongs to a deceased person?
We do not indicate or highlight records of deceased individuals, though Trusted Individuals, at their discretion, could use existing fields to provide this detail if desired, for example, by including this information in the biography field, or after the person’s name.
How does ORCID handle discrepancies in the record of a deceased person?
Any discrepancies will be reported to the record’s Trusted Individual, if there is one. If needed, requests for changes will be handled according to our Dispute Procedure.
Is it possible to register an ORCID iD for a deceased person?
No. Our policy is that an ORCID iD can only be created by the individual themselves, not by any other person. This is because a core principle of ORCID is individual control.
You may wish to contact ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier), as their mission is “to assign to the public name(s) of a researcher, inventor, writer, artist, performer, publisher, etc. a persistent unique identifying number”; they take a library authority approach to this, rather than a researcher-controlled one as we do.