How to handle authors with multiple ORCIDs?

We previously discussed the possibility of one author having two or more ORCIDs, but IIRC dismissed this as a hopefully rare case. As we recently started to record ORCIDs in the XML, and I’m trying to create a branch with the most recent data transitioned to the new author system, I am afraid to report that we already have such a case:

- Alexander I. Rudnicky
- entry in name variants file without an ORCID
- listed with [0000-0003-3896-9397](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3896-9397) on [2025.emnlp-main.1170](https://aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-main.1170/)
- listed with [0000-0003-2044-8446](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2044-8446) on [2022.insights-1.21](https://aclanthology.org/2022.insights-1.21/)
- both ORCIDs link to http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~air i.e. appear to refer to the same person

I would really like to avoid making the ORCID a list attribute (so that a single person can have more than one), as that would add complexity everywhere in the code, but I don’t see an obvious alternative either right now. Since we want to use ORCIDs for author ID matching, we need to somehow associate both of these ORCIDs with this person if we want to avoid fragmentation of their author page.

Start by reviewing the current author system and the XML ORCID records described in the issue, including the two linked Alexander I. Rudnicky examples. Determine how multiple identifiers are currently represented and document a decided approach that associates both ORCIDs with one person without fragmenting the author page; completion requires agreement on the data-model change and its consequences.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.