In the context of research, unique author identifiers are one way to solve the problem of author ambiguity. Being able to consistently and accurately identify the author of a piece of research is valuable for researchers (because it means you can quickly find other work by the same author and ensure your own work is linked to you) and for administrators and librarians (because it’s vital to be able to manage and report on the research your institution has produced). (Source)
Several unique author identifiers have been developed to address this issue in recent years, but the three main ones are:
Find out why is important as a researcher to have unique author identifiers and how to create them