Published in rOpenSci - open tools for open science
Author Maëlle Salmon
![](https://ropensci.org/img/blog-images/2018-10-08-orcid/codemetar-1.png)
Proper identification of individuals is crucial for acknowledging andstudying their scientific work, be it journal articles or pieces ofsoftware. In this tech note, one year after CRAN started supportingORCIDs, we shall explain why and how to use unique author identifiers inDESCRIPTION files.Why use ORCIDs on CRAN? When analyzing the authorship of CRAN packages, one can look at authors’names and email addresses.