2026-05-26 Default affiliation matching strategy is now single search

Starting May 26th, the ?affiliation parameter of the ROR API uses the new "single search" strategy by default. This is not a breaking change, and the legacy "multisearch" strategy can still be used if desired, as described below and in the Affiliation parameter documentation.

Background

ROR developed and rigorously tested the "single search" matching strategy in conjunction with Crossref. OpenAlex adopted the strategy soon after it was published, and it is being used as the basis for a forthcoming Crossref initiative to match funder names to ROR IDs. The single search strategy outperforms the previous ROR multisearch matching strategy in both precision and recall while also being more computationally efficient.

In December 2025, we announced the implementation of the single search matching strategy as an option for matching text strings to ROR IDs with the Affiliation parameter of the ROR API, and we have now made single search the default.

Query formats

If you wish, you can specify the matching strategy you want to use for programmatic matching of text strings to ROR IDs. If no strategy is specified, the affiliation parameter will now use the single search strategy by default.

Default - single search

https://api.ror.org/v2/organizations?affiliation=[URL-encoded-string]

Specify single search

https://api.ror.org/v2/organizations?affiliation=[URL-encoded-string]&single_search

Specify multisearch

https://api.ror.org/v2/organizations?affiliation=[URL-encoded-string]&multisearch

Learn more

For more details, read the Affiliation parameter documentation or the launch announcement for the single search matching strategy.

For help, contact [email protected].