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", allowing systems to understand and display organizational hierarchies and connections. The relationships element is an array, so organizations can have multiple children, multiple parents, and multiple lateral relationships.

For example, the US National Cancer Institute is a child organization of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and it also has multiple child organizations of its own and multiple related organizations.

{[...]
   "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"
}

In the ROR search interface, the number of relationships (if any) is shown on each record in the list view, and clicking the "View Details" button will take the user to the individual record, where all relationships are displayed.

Pictured below is an image of an organizational "family tree" created from ROR records with an organization tree script. The United States Department of Energy is the top node and has many "children" and "grandchildren" and one "great-granchild" organization. (Laterally related organizations are not shown in this view.)

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 ROR data structure: relationships for a full explanation.

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