External Identifier: The <contrib-id> element holds an external identifier, typically assigned to a person by an agency such as the publisher, ORCID, or other personal identification authority. The contents of this element should not be confused with the @id attribute, which holds an internal document identifier that can be used by software to perform a simple link inside the XML document.

Type of Identifier Best Practice: Best Practice is to use the @contrib-id-type attribute to indicate the type of the external identifier, such as a publisher’s identifier, an ORCID, a SCOPUS identifier, or similar. (See @contrib-id-type for values.)

Authority for Identifier: If the authority that administers the identifier is both known and not the same as the identifier type, the attribute @assigning-authority may be used to name the organization or system that assigned the identifier or administers the identifier. For example, if both the type of identifier and the name of the organization are “orcid”, then there is no need to use @assigning-authority. An example where both attributes might be useful is:

<contrib-id contrib-id-type="scopus" assigning-authority="Elsevier"> ...
</contrib-id>

Historical Note: Until JATS version 1.2d2 (2018), the @contrib-id-type’s value conflated two meanings: the attribute could hold the type of identifier (such as an ORCID), or it could hold the name of the organization or system that defined or registered the identifier (such as the name of a publisher). There was no way to state both that the identifier content of the element was a Scopus ID and that the repsonsible agency was elsevier. Although all the previous @contrib-id-type values will continue to be accepted, for Best Practice, the @assigning-authority should name an organization and the @contrib-id-type attribute should describe the identifier type.