ORCID

There is a global system for unique identification of electronic publications: DOI. But so far there is no unique system to identify researchers. Thompson/ISI has http://stochastictrend.blogspot.com/2011/02/researcher-id-to-be-more-integrated.html">Researcher ID but it is dependent on authors registering themselves and is still of limited utility. Databases such as RePEc or SSRN use their own