The ORCID database and the representation of the academic career in Brazil

potential, coverage, and challenges

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/biblios.2025.1267

Keywords:

ORCID, academic career, higher education institutions, scientometrics, Brazil

Abstract

Objective. The academic profession has been explored using various methods and data sources, such as curricula vitae, publication databases, and more recently, the ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) database. This study aims to explore the coverage of the ORCID database in Brazil concerning the academic community, focusing on the case of professors in public and private higher education institutions (HEIs) in 2020. Method. All records of individuals affiliated with organizations in Brazil from the ORCID database were extracted, cleaned, and organized into a database that underwent normalization procedures for variables (cities, states, regions, and the names of HEIs). Occupations were filtered to select only faculty members, who were further categorized by their area of work and career level. The HEIs were classified according to the typology of Schwartzman et al. (2021). The data from the ORCID database were compared with the Higher Education Census from the Ministry of Education. Results. The records of faculty members in the ORCID database represent about 7.5% of the total number of faculty, with a majority of male professors, with single affiliation, distributed across 1834 HEIs. Regarding career level, first, there are the records in which it was not possible to identify the position. Second, the most frequently identified categories reflect the higher education teaching career levels in reverse order (from the highest position to entry-level positions). There is a higher concentration in the Southeast region, especially São Paulo. There is an overrepresentation of faculty profiles in research-intensive HEIs. Conclusions. Although this is a small sample of the total Brazilian faculty, the profiles in the ORCID database show similar distributions to the overall population in terms of gender and geographical distribution, mirroring existing inequalities and asymmetries. However, the ORCID database presents significant biases regarding career position and affiliation with types of HEIs, which may be related to the incentives for registering with ORCID and the non-standardized fields in the database. Given the potential for increased coverage, a research agenda opens up for studies on academic careers in Brazil. This includes analyzing mobility between institutions, career progression, and field differences, complemented by publication data. Additionally, comparisons with other Brazilian databases, such as the Lattes Platform, and other countries could be made.

Author Biographies

Ana Maria Carneiro, Universidade Estadual de Campinas

PhD in Science and Technology Policy from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp - 2007), Master's degree in Sociology from Unicamp (2000) and Bachelor's degree in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Goiás (1997). She has a postdoctoral degree in STI Evaluation (Unicamp, 2009) and in Higher Education (University of California, Berkeley, 2016). She is currently a Pq Career Researcher at the Center for Public Policy Studies (NEPP/Unicamp), Permanent Professor in the Graduate Program in Science and Technology Policy (DPCT/IG/Unicamp); Associate Coordinator of the Study Group on Research and Innovation Organization (GEOPI/DPCT/IG/Unicamp). Between 2018 and 2021, she was an advisor for institutional evaluation at the General Coordination Office of Unicamp. She has experience in interdisciplinary research, working mainly on the following topics: evaluation of results and impacts, higher education, Science, Technology, and Innovation, equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in academic careers and scientific diaspora.

Daniela Maciel Pinto, Embrapa Territorial

She is a data analyst specializing in Databases (Ulbra) and holds an MBA in Data Science and Analytics from the University of São Paulo (USP). She also has a master's degree from USP, focused on Information Science, and a degree in Library Science and Documentation from ECA/USP. She is currently a doctoral student in the Scientific and Technological Policy Program at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp - 2026). In addition, she works at Embrapa Territorial, where she is involved in activities related to technology transfer and innovation. She was coordinator of Spatial Data Infrastructure at Embrapa (GeoInfo) and supervisor of the Technology Prospecting and Evaluation Sector (SPAT) in the Technology Transfer area at Embrapa Territorial. She led the development of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) evaluation methodology, Ambitec-TICs, which identifies the impact (ex post) of technological solutions on a territorial basis. She also conceived and led the development of the “TecAmazônia” application, financed by the Amazon Fund, aimed at transferring technological solutions to the Amazon Biome.

João Gabriel Pedreira de Moura Gomes, Universidade Estadual de Campinas

Graduating in Architecture and Urbanism from the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture, and Urbanism at the State University of Campinas (FECFAU/UNICAMP). Member of the Laboratory for Studies on Research and Innovation Organization (Lab-GEOPI) at the Institute of Geosciences at UNICAMP.

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2025-12-08

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Carneiro, A. M., Pinto, D. M., & Gomes, J. G. P. de M. (2025). The ORCID database and the representation of the academic career in Brazil: potential, coverage, and challenges. Biblios Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, (esp.), e014. https://doi.org/10.5195/biblios.2025.1267

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