ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID initiative, has launched its researcher registry and can now be used by researchers to create a profile and ID for themselves. http://about.orcid.org/.   The ORCID project is an attempt to disambiguate researcher names, or in other words, how to tell one John Smith from another John Smith or one J. Smith from another J. Smith.  From the ORCID website:  “For scholars, ORCID provides a persistent identifier that unambiguously distinguishes you as the author or creator of your published works in systems that adopt ORCID.  Through integration in workflows such as manuscript and grant submission as well as researcher profiles, ORCID promises to help scholars and institutions manage academic information and, ultimately, to provide both with more control over their own record of scholarship.” Click here for more details.