Ringgold Identifier

Click here to get the Ringgold ID for your organization

A simple way to manage the complex world of organizations

The Ringgold ID is a Persistent Identifier (PID) used across the scholarly communications sector. PIDs provide two major benefits:

PIDs Enforce Uniqueness

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Many organizations have similar or even identical names. Northeastern University or North Eastern University? One is in Boston Massachusetts (Ringgold ID 1848) and the other in Khon Kaen, Thailand (Ringgold ID 65143). Even with a normalized name, you – and your data systems – might have trouble telling these two apart if they are not connected to a unique identifier, causing confusion in reports, customer service, and other areas both internally and external to the organization.

Conversely, many organizations are known by more than one name, any of which might appear in your data: Tokyo Ika Daigaku could be listed as an author’s affiliation. By using Ringgold ID 13112 you can easily understand that it’s the same Tokyo Medical University which is found among your customers.

PIDs Enable Interoperability

In multiple internal data systems, information about the same organization is likely to reside: fulfillment, authentication, financial, editorial, and more. By using unique numerical identifiers, a single data element can be used to join these records definitively, regardless of how the name of the organization is rendered.

The Ringgold Identifier is a unique numerical identifier applied to organizations in the scholarly communications sector

Some examples:

Ringgold ID 9144 Ringgold ID 7891 Ringgold ID 27991 Ringgold ID 33179 Ringgold ID 12652 Ringgold ID 380965 Ringgold ID 118984 Ringgold ID 355321 Ringgold ID 5072 Ringgold ID 42506 Ringgold ID 1737 Ringgold ID 396788

Ruprecht Karls Universitat Heidelberg (Germany)
Heidelberg University (Ohio, USA)
Universidad de los Andes (Colombia)
Universidad de Los Andes (Venezuela)
University of Science and Technology of China
University of Science and Technology (Korea)
Pan Africa Christian University (Kenya)
Pan African Christian University (Ghana)
Wellcome Trust
Petrobras
EBSCO Industries Inc
African American Civil War Memorial and Museum

These also show the complexity of organization names, which can easily lead to confusion within a database. We assign a Ringgold ID to each organization when we create its Identify Database record, and include organizations which are part of the scholarly ecosystem – licensees, publishers, intermediaries, and funders – as well as those which license and create scholarly content – universities, hospitals, corporations, and government entities.

How can you apply Ringgold Identifiers to your records?

Your needs are unique. Contact us for an introductory conversation.

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>> See also Identify Audit Services and Identify Database