ROR — Research Organization Registry

Overview

ROR (Research Organization Registry) is a community-led registry that provides persistent, unique identifiers for research organisations, including universities, research institutes, funders, hospitals, and government agencies. Launched in 2019 and maintained by a coalition of California Digital Library, Crossref, DataCite, and the ISNI International Agency, ROR provides a machine-readable, globally unique identifier for institutions. This enables unambiguous affiliation metadata in publications, datasets, and grant records.

How ROR Works

Each organisation receives a unique ROR ID in the format https://ror.org/XXXXXXXXX. ROR records include the official name, aliases, country, organisation type, external identifiers (ISNI, GRID, Wikidata), and relationships to parent and child organisations. The full ROR dataset is openly available under CC0. ROR IDs are resolved at https://ror.org/<id> and via a public API.

Connections

• relatedTo: ORCID (ORCID is the complementary persistent identifier for researchers; ROR and ORCID are designed to work together as the person and organisation layers of the PID ecosystem)
• relatedTo: DataCite (DataCite is a founding coalition partner co-maintaining ROR and integrates ROR IDs as the standard institution identifier in its metadata schema)

Resources

• https://ror.org
• https://ror.org/about (ROR overview and governance)