Quantifying the field of musicology is certainly a challenging task, but one worth pursuing. Whilst many universities have departments of musicology, we know that there is significant musicological research taking place outside of these departments. We know, for example, that there are many colleagues supporting musicological development through teaching and research in conservatoires, even though this is sometimes done under the auspices of music ‘theory’ or music ‘history’. Representing this activity under the banner of ‘musicology’ is essential if we are to fully understand the dynamics of our field.
Building on work started during a Short-Term Scientific Mission in Birmingham (UK) in February 2024 with COST colleagues Aleksandra Pister, Lyra Kastrati, and Guillaume Avocat, Adam Whittaker (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire) has been working with Stephen Tatlow (University of Gloucestershire) to explore the ways we might go about mapping the field of musicology quantitatively using commonly understood and widely accessible metrics and datasets. One of these tools is the ORCID database. This blog outlines some of the work that has continued beyond the STSM, setting out a way in which we might use this database to articulate the scope of musicology in Europe.
What is ORCID?

An ORCID profile is a ‘free, unique, persistent identifier (PID) for individuals to use as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities.’ Anyone involved in scholarship, research, and innovation activities can register for a profile and populate this with as much or as little information as they choose. The Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) organisation aims to ensure that every individual involved in research, scholarship, and innovation worldwide can be linked to their contributions to all disciplines, in all countries, across all time. A key part of ORCID’s mission toward this goal is the ability for any individual to register for a profile and a unique identification number, whether they have an institutional affiliation or not. Researchers can also provide permission for external organisations (such as their host institutions and academic publishers) to be able to directly edit and update their record in order to maintain the relevance and currency of their profile. In certain countries, the UK for example, institutions automatically integrate their staff records with ORCID as part of national assessment exercises, but this is not widespread across Europe. Users can also manually add publications, job roles, qualifications, and other information about their research activities. Even though our COST Action has 207 members from 40 countries, ORCID has 9 million registered researchers, at least some of whom will be musicologists.
What might ORCID tell us about musicology in conservatoires?

The ORCID database of researchers can be searched to identify individuals that are affiliated with specific terms: e.g., a search for ‘“Birmingham” AND “Conservatoire”’ would bring up individuals whose profiles include those words, such as any individual who has been employed by or studied at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, now or in the past. Other searches can combine key words to identify individuals associated with music within specific areas: e.g., a search for ‘“Music” AND “Aveiro”’ brings up individuals affiliated with the music degree course at University of Aveiro. This yields useful information because the musicology-related degree courses at University of Aveiro are affiliated with the Department of Communication and Art, and won’t be found in a web search for departments of musicology. Therefore, ORCID can provide a way to identify individuals that may be relevant to projects such as EarlyMuse, even where musicological work may be taking place outside of a department of musicology.
Clearly, we needed to narrow our search down from 9 million individuals. To do this, we used the list of around 300 institutions registered as ‘Active’ or ‘Associate’ members of the Association Européenne des Conservatoires (AEC) to identify institutions who identified as ‘conservatoires’. Searches were then conducted through ORCID’s public API for any individuals affiliated with these conservatoires. These searches revealed 5316 unique individuals at 262 institutions within COST countries. Not all institutions across Europe are members of the AEC, so this is only a partial indication of the potential size of a community.
Table 1 – Numbers of AEC Institutions represented in ORCID.
Country | Institutions |
Armenia | 1 |
Austria | 9 |
Belarus | 1 |
Belgium | 9 |
Bosnia and Herzegovina | 2 |
Bulgaria | 3 |
Croatia | 2 |
Czech Republic | 2 |
Denmark | 4 |
Estonia | 3 |
Country | Institutions |
Finland | 2 |
France | 16 |
Georgia | 1 |
Germany | 28 |
Greece | 3 |
Holy See (Vatican City State) | 1 |
Hungary | 1 |
Iceland | 1 |
Ireland | 3 |
Italy | 50 |
Country | Institutions |
Latvia | 1 |
Lithuania | 3 |
Luxembourg | 4 |
Moldova | 1 |
Montenegro | 1 |
Netherlands | 9 |
Norway | 10 |
Poland | 8 |
Portugal | 5 |
Romania | 3 |
Country | Institutions |
Russian Federation | 3 |
Serbia | 2 |
Slovakia | 1 |
Slovenia | 2 |
Spain | 21 |
Sweden | 17 |
Switzerland | 8 |
Turkey | 6 |
Ukraine | 4 |
United Kingdom | 11 |
From such a list, we will be able to start to drill down into the specifics of the kinds of research being undertaken, the kinds of career pathways that individuals take, and where connection points for collaboration are leveraging significant research funding. On a more immediately practical level though, this kind of list could be useful for identifying researchers, and for monitoring changes in the size of our field and community without having to manually comb through institutional profile pages or rely on pre-existent personal networks.
So what?
A similar process could be used in future research projects targeting other institutions such as universities. One of ORCID’s greatest strengths in this regard is that it can enhance the discoverability of individuals and outputs because it follows the individual through multiple job roles and is often updated automatically by publishers and national funders. For example, a publications list on an institutional webpage may be years out of date, but many publishers of those publications do subscribe to ORCID and update author profiles on ORCID automatically as part of their publication process. Therefore, it is straightforward to discover research publications written by authors within the ORCID dataset, and by extension to identify what topics an individual researcher has been interested in historically. We intend to conduct a more detailed analysis of these datasets but would welcome the input of Early Muse COST action members to explore different search terms across multiple languages to ensure a wide range of musicological work is represented in any analysis.
There are, however, several limitations for using ORCID in this way. First, ORCID is principally a database of researchers, not a database of research: searches cannot be easily conducted for research conducted in a specific field (e.g., historical musicology). Second, whilst some institutions and publishers do automatically update author profiles on ORCID where possible, this is not yet universal standard practice and many profiles are only updated manually, especially where individuals are only casually affiliated with an institution. This is particularly relevant in the case of postgraduate students and doctoral candidates, who often exist in a liminal space between employee and student. Third, not all those affiliated with an institution are present within the dataset as ORCID is an opt-in system; in particular, ORCID has low market penetration in some countries, particularly those in South America, and Africa. Importantly from the perspective of EarlyMuse though, is the low representation of researchers working in some Inclusiveness Target Countries (ITCs). This means that valuable members of our community are not currently represented in one of the major global researcher databases.
Finally, the EarlyMuse COST action focuses on institutions which use many different languages. This means that searches must be conducted in several languages. For example, unique results were found for both “Stockholms Konstnärliga Högskola” and “Stockholm University of the Arts.” As many academic terms lack a standardised English translation, this can mean that many search terms must be identified when investigating research in some fields.
Why does this matter?
Despite these limitations, the ORCID database contains much potential for identifying affiliates of specific organisations around the world; no other academic dataset contains so many individuals, and their institutional connections, in a searchable form. This is especially true in understanding the dynamics of our field and the career trajectories of researchers working in musicology, or musicology-adjacent fields. It holds significant potential to address many of the challenges encountered during the Birmingham STSM around accessing robust data on our field. This idea emerged as a direct result of the conversations of the Birmingham STSM. Through a more sustained examination of the ORCID database, it may become possible to better quantify the impact of centres, labs, projects, and partnerships that are supporting musicological research, and help to more precisely locate musicology within the wider scientific and academic community across Europe. We could, for example, look at career trajectories in specific countries or regions, examine the organisational structure of musicological work within and beyond institutions, look at ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ spots of activity, and help to purposefully support network building in areas in need of greater research infrastructure. We suggest that anyone involved in our field makes sure that they register for an ORCID profile (even if kept private) and that these profiles are updated to make sure that our innovative work and purposeful contributions are represented in an important global dataset.