ROR - Research Organization Registry

Name

ROR - Research Organization Registry

Legal name

Research Organization Registry (ROR)

Website

https://ror.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2019

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Persistent Identifier Registry

NAICS

Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (519)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

Rights Catalog Management & Metadata/Asset Registry (MPADALAL)

Keywords

• Persistent identifier registry
• Research organization identifiers
• Open scholarly infrastructure
• Affiliation metadata services
• Funder identification registry

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. No commercial revenue — free open infrastructure: ROR has no revenue model and no plans to develop a paid service. Core operating costs are funded through in-kind support from ROR's three operating organizations (California Digital Library, Crossref, DataCite). The registry is free and open to all with no fees, API charges, or access restrictions. Additional ad hoc contributions from community supporters help offset operating expenses and fund time-limited activities. Grant funding is occasionally pursued for specific projects.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels10 records

Core offering

ROR (Research Organization Registry) operates a global, community-led open registry providing unique persistent identifiers (ROR IDs) and metadata for over 129,639 research and funding organizations worldwide. The registry data is provided under CC0 public domain dedication and is freely accessible via a REST API (version 2), web-based search interface, and downloadable data dumps on Zenodo. Updates are curated through a transparent community process, with new releases published approximately monthly.

Product overview

ROR (Research Organization Registry) is a single unified registry product providing open persistent identifiers for research and funding organizations. The core offering consists of the ROR Registry (containing over 129,000 organization records), accessible via three channels: the ROR REST API for programmatic access, the ROR Web Search interface for human users, and downloadable Data Dumps published on Zenodo. A Curation Request Form enables community contributions to maintain and expand the registry. Technical Documentation on ReadMe.io supports implementation. All components are openly available under CC0 license with no fees or access restrictions.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• ROR Registry A global, community-led registry containing unique persistent identifiers and metadata for over 129,000 research and funding organizations worldwide. Registry data is openly available under CC0 license and updated on a rolling basis through community-based curation with new releases approximately monthly.
• ROR REST API A publicly accessible REST API providing programmatic access to ROR organization identifiers and metadata. Version 2 supports queries by created/last modified dates, organization search, and retrieval of full records with multilingual names, locations, relationships, and external IDs.
• ROR Web Search A web-based search interface for browsing and retrieving ROR organization records. The search application uses ROR API v2 and displays organization names identified by type and language, with links to JSON views of records.
• ROR Data Dump Downloadable complete ROR dataset published on Zenodo containing JSON and CSV files formatted according to ROR schema v1 and v2. Data is provided under CC0 public domain dedication with no restrictions on access or use.
• ROR Technical Documentation Comprehensive technical documentation hosted on Readme.io covering ROR API usage, schema specifications, implementation guides, and display guidelines.
• Curation Request Form A community-facing submission interface allowing anyone to request additions of new organizations to ROR, modifications to existing records, deprecations, mergers, or splits. Requests are reviewed through an open GitHub-based workflow.

Quantifiable outcome

• 129,639 active organization records in the ROR registry covering all continents and organization types
• +6 more outcomes

Named customers11 records

Segments8 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration18 records

AI capability4 records

Feature7 records

Partnerships

22 partnerships are on record, tiered minor and core.

• National Library of LuxembourgminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2025ROR worked with The National Library of Luxembourg to add and update Luxembourgian organizations in the registry.
• Clarivate (Web of Science)coreTechnology or Integration · 18 December 2024Clarivate integrated ROR into Web of Science Core Collection. Users can search for publications by institution using a ROR ID. ROR IDs appear in organization profiles. ROR IDs are also exposed in the Web of Science API Expanded for automated tools. This is the first phase of ROR adoption for Clarivate, with future plans to collect ROR IDs directly from publisher metadata.
• Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024ROR collaborated with KISTI on a project to add and modify approximately 450 Korean research organizations to the registry.
• Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024ROR worked with FCT to add and modify hundreds of records for research organizations in Portugal, improving national research organization coverage.
• Africa PID AllianceminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024ROR collaborated with the Africa PID Alliance to add and update many ROR records for African research organizations, improving geographic coverage of under-represented regions.
• Japan NISTEPminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024ROR worked with Japan's National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) to reconcile ROR records with the NISTEP Dictionary of Names of Universities and Public Organizations.
• Australia NCRISminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024ROR added and updated research infrastructure facilities for Australia's National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).
• Curation Advisory Board (CAB)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024ROR's Curation Advisory Board reviews suggested updates to the registry and advises on curation practices. Current members: Jackson Huang (Educopia), Kateřina Janderová (Czech Academy of Sciences), Carole Melzac (ABES), Carly Robinson (SPARC), Arthur Smith (American Physical Society), Shayn Smulyan (Crossref), Martin Spenger (LMU Munich).
• InvenioRDM (CERN)coreTechnology or Integration · 13 October 2023InvenioRDM is the open source research data management system that runs Zenodo. It was architected from the beginning with ROR for both author affiliations and funders. The ROR-powered funder lookup is built into InvenioRDM so any institution using InvenioRDM can use ROR for organization identification.
• NIH GREI (Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 October 2023Seven generalist repositories (Dataverse, Dryad, Figshare, Mendeley Data, OSF, Vivli, Zenodo) participating in NIH GREI have agreed to implement ROR for author affiliations. Dryad, Figshare, Zenodo, and Vivli also implemented ROR for funder identification. NIH GREI manages a community on Zenodo associated with its ROR ID.
• OpenAlexcoreTechnology or Integration · 1 October 2023OpenAlex uses ROR IDs to assign affiliations to millions of works in its global academic graph. OpenAlex adopted a new affiliation matching strategy developed in collaboration with Crossref and ROR to significantly improve ROR ID coverage. OpenAlex is listed among systems using ROR for funder identification.
• 4Science (DSpace)coreTechnology or Integration · 1 September 20234Science enabled ROR support in both DSpace 8.0 and DSpace-CRIS, allowing these repository systems to use ROR IDs for both author affiliations and funders. 4Science co-organized a webinar with ROR on new ROR features in DSpace.
• Europe PMCcoreTechnology or Integration · 30 June 2023Europe PMC integrated ROR into its Grant Finder, enabling users to search for grants and link them to funder organization records via ROR IDs.
• Dimensions (Digital Science)coreTechnology or Integration · 1 January 2023Dimensions grant data includes ROR IDs for organizations. Dimensions regularly checks for new ROR records and updates its mapped metadata accordingly. Figshare pulls ROR IDs from Dimensions for funder identification. ROR was originally seeded with GRID data used by Dimensions, creating a close relationship between ROR and GRID IDs.
• The LenscoreTechnology or Integration · 1 December 2022The Lens added an 'Institution ROR ID Lineage' feature enabling search for all scholarly works associated with an organization plus all its child organizations in the ROR hierarchy. The University of London lineage returns 780,000+ works compared to 98,000 for the institution alone.
• ORCIDcoreTechnology or Integration · 22 October 2021ORCID integrated ROR, enabling researchers to associate their ORCID records with their organizational affiliations via ROR IDs. ORCID renewed support for ROR to maximize the quality of organization information for researchers.
• Zenodo (CERN)coreTechnology or Integration · 1 January 2021Zenodo uses InvenioRDM, which was architected with ROR for both author affiliations and funders from the start. Zenodo's custom award lookup is powered exclusively by ROR data. Zenodo's data is preserved on Zenodo's infrastructure. ROR's complete dataset is also archived on Zenodo under DOI 10.5281/zenodo.6347574.
• DryadcoreTechnology or Integration · 10 July 2019First system to adopt ROR (2019) and the only system to have fully transitioned from the Crossref Open Funder Registry to ROR for funder identification (October 2023). Dryad uses ROR for both institutional affiliation and funder identification in DataCite DOI metadata, with ROR-powered typeahead lookups in its submission form.
• FigsharecoreTechnology or Integration · 10 July 2019Figshare pulls grant title, grant ID, funder name, and ROR ID from Dimensions grant data for inclusion in Figshare item metadata. Both figshare.com and Oxford University's Figshare-powered institutional repository use ROR IDs as funder identifiers in DataCite DOI metadata.
• California Digital LibrarycoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2019One of ROR's three founding operating organizations (alongside Crossref and DataCite). California Digital Library contributes governance oversight, operational resourcing, and technical expertise. The California Digital Library is the administrative home for ROR's project lead and staff. Governed by a Memorandum of Agreement renewed regularly among the three operating organizations.
• CrossrefcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2019One of ROR's three founding operating organizations. Crossref is integrating ROR into its metadata infrastructure and announced the deprecation of the Open Funder Registry in favor of ROR. Crossref is collaborating with ROR on large-scale matching strategies to connect tens of thousands of funder names in Crossref metadata to ROR IDs. Crossref staff member Shayn Smulyan serves on the ROR Curation Advisory Board.
• DataCitecoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2019One of ROR's three founding operating organizations. DataCite supported ROR in its metadata schema since August 2019, enabling ROR IDs in fundingReferences. Nearly one-third of DataCite DOIs with funder identifiers use ROR. DataCite staff are actively involved in ROR's governance and operations.

Scale indicators10 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• DataCite: DataCite is a founding operating organization of ROR and a DOI registration agency that uses ROR for funder identification in DataCite DOI metadata. Like Crossref, it is a peer in the scholarly PID ecosystem with significant overlap in mission and governance.
• ORCID: ORCID provides persistent identifiers for researchers (as opposed to ROR's organizations) and is one of ROR's core integration partners. Both are community-led, open scholarly infrastructure initiatives with similar governance models and embedded distribution via publishers and repositories.
• Crossref: Crossref is both a founding operating organization of ROR and a closely related peer providing persistent identifiers (DOIs) for scholarly publications. The Open Funder Registry transition to ROR makes them direct collaborators and partial substitutes in the funder-identification space.
• ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier): ISNI is the ISO-certified international standard for organization identifiers, broadly analogous to ROR. ROR crosswalks to ISNI when available, and the two are the most direct peer standards in the organization-identifier space, though ISNI is broader in scope and not free to use.
• GRID (Global Research Identifier Database): GRID was ROR's predecessor and seed-data source. GRID discontinued its public releases in Q4 2021, passing the torch to ROR as the leading open organization identifier, making it the most direct historical peer and now a defunct comparator.

Broad incumbents

• CNRI (Corporation for National Research Initiatives): CNRI operates the ISNI assignment agency and broader identifier infrastructure. As a long-established research infrastructure organization, it is a comparable entity in scope and authority over persistent identifier systems, though focused on a different standard.
• DOI Foundation: The DOI Foundation oversees the broader DOI system underpinning Crossref and DataCite. While not a direct competitor to ROR, it is the umbrella infrastructure authority adjacent to ROR's core distribution channels and essential to ROR's embedded position in scholarly metadata.
• VIAF (Virtual International Authority File): VIAF aggregates national library authority records for organizations and is an established, broadly-used organization identifier system. While primarily cultural-heritage focused, it serves as a comparable open-data authority for organization disambiguation with global reach.

Emerging players

• Wikidata: Wikidata provides community-curated organization data with persistent identifiers (Q-numbers) and is a crosswalk target for ROR. While broader in scope, Wikidata functions as an alternative open-data source for research organization metadata and competes for the same downstream use cases.
• OpenAIRE: OpenAIRE consumes ROR data for its Graph dataset and supports ROR as one of several organization-identifier schemes. It is a peer in the open scholarly infrastructure ecosystem with overlapping mission around open science metadata.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/ResearchOrgs
• GitHubgithub.com/ror-community
• YouTubeyoutube.com/channel/UCQBOpOpW-JEKoVCUlmCK1Eg
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/ror-research-organization-registry

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles6 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about ROR - Research Organization Registry