A unique researcher identifier is required to create a clear and unambiguous scholarly record. This will greatly facilitate the scientific discovery process, and will improve the efficiency of funding and collaboration. This identifier should transcend institutions, disciplines, and national boundaries, and should be trustworthy and persistent over time. The Open Researcher & Contributor ID (ORCID) initiative was started exactly one year ago here in London to fulfill this promise. In September 2010, ORCID Inc. was incorporated as a non-profit organization. ORCID aims to solve the author/contributor name ambiguity problem in scholarly communications by creating a central registry of unique identifiers for individual researchers and an open and transparent linking mechanism between ORCID and other current author ID schemes. Howard Ratner, CTO of Nature Publishing Group and Chair of the Board of Directors of ORCID will talk about the significant progress that the ORCID initiative has made in the last 12 months, and the challenges that lie ahead.