ROR hierarchies and relationships

ROR records store both structural and temporal connections in the relationships field with the values "Parent", "Child", "Related", "Successor", and "Predecessor". Connections and relationships between records can therefore be mapped and graphed.

The University of California System, for instance (https://ror.org/00pjdza24), has many "child" organizations such as the University of California, Los Angeles (https://ror.org/046rm7j60). The University of California System is also related laterally to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (https://ror.org/02jbv0t02) whose parent organization is the United States Department of Energy (https://ror.org/01bj3aw27).

Pictured below is a vertical "family tree" created from ROR records with an organization tree script. The University of California System is the top node and has 14 child nodes, several of which have their own "children" and "grandchildren." (Laterally related organizations are not shown.)

1050 — List of University of California system children and grandchildren expressed as nodes in an indented list from the ROR organization tree script written by Sandra Mierz.

Relationships are displayed on individual records in the ROR search UI, as for example the record for the US National Cancer Institute, whose parent is the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and which has multiple children and multiple related organizations.

1000 — ROR Record for the US National Cancer Institute showing the parent organization as the National Institutes of Health as well as three child organizations and two related organizations.

The relationships element is an array, so organizations can have multiple children, multiple parents, and multiple lateral relationships.

{[...]
   "name" : "National Cancer Institute",
   "relationships" : [
      {
         "id" : "https://ror.org/00w52vt71",
         "label" : "Hollings Cancer Center",
         "type" : "Related"
      },
      {
         "id" : "https://ror.org/01cwqze88",
         "label" : "National Institutes of Health",
         "type" : "Parent"
      },
      {
         "id" : "https://ror.org/05bjen692",
         "label" : "Center for Cancer Research",
         "type" : "Child"
      },
      {
         "id" : "https://ror.org/03v6m3209",
         "label" : "Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research",
         "type" : "Child"
      },
      {
         "id" : "https://ror.org/05n6zrm60",
         "label" : "SWOG Cancer Research Network",
         "type" : "Child"
      },
      {
         "id" : "https://ror.org/02qyzaf42",
         "label" : "The Cancer Imaging Archive",
         "type" : "Related"
      }
   ],
   "status" : "active",
   "types" : [
      "Government"
   ],
   "wikipedia_url" : "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cancer_Institute"
}

If an organization ceases operations and passes on its work to another organization, that relationship is also reflected in ROR through the "Predecessor" and "Successor" relationship types. See Successor organizations for a full explanation.

See also our explainer "Parents, Children, and Other Relatioships in ROR".