Making sure that your identity is rightly associated with any outcome of your research endeavour is crucial. Misspelling names, changes in surnames, different affiliations, and different types of the alphabet are some of the common problems. To avoid ambiguity, the usage of PIDs (persistent identifiers) is a gold standard. Some of them are associated with academic databases and some are publisher-independent. More and more journals, funders, and various research stakeholders are requesting your PID as a part of the submission of the application. Make sure that you have these PIDs active and always up to date. Read the ORCID flyer to fully understand the values and benefits of unique identifiers.
In most cases, the identifier will automatically create a profile page that displays basic information about the researcher including affiliation and lists a portion of his/her research outputs. Due to various ecosystems (Web of Science, Scopus, etc.) a researcher can have more than one identifier affiliated with her/him. Make sure that:
- individual identifiers and related profiles are up to date and the affiliation is up to date.
- listed research outputs are correct, especially for public profiles
- to limit manual updates, consider linking individual identifiers, e.g. Scopus ID<->ORCID.
Spare 4 minutes of your time and watch the ORCID video where the added value and importance of PIDs, especially ORCID is explained using a real-life example.
Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) is a PID provided by a non-profit organisation with a vision to have a world where all who participate in research, scholarship, and innovation are uniquely identified and connected to their contributions across disciplines, borders, and time. You can learn more about ORCID on its website.
Watch the quick video on how to set up your ORCID, how to update it and how to get the most out of it.
Web of Science ResearcherID is an identifier that connects an author with all of her/his research outputs across the Web of Science ecosystem (Web of Science, Publons, InCities, EndNote).
Consider connecting ResearcherID with ORCID to ensure that you can be credited for work beyond the Web of Science ecosystem.
Scopus Author Identifier is automatically generated for an author who has a paper listed in the Scopus database. There is no need to create a Scopus Author ID. You can learn more about Scopus ID here.
You can learn the Scopus ID of any researcher by simply searching for his/her name in Scopus Database. Click on the author’s Scopus profile and look for the number marked “SC” under the name section.
Consider connecting your Scopus ID with the ORCID. When an ORCID is associated with a Scopus author profile, viewers can see the link to that ORCID on the Author details page. You can also use ORCID to search for an author in Scopus Database.
Google Scholar Profile provides an author with a place to showcase her/his research outcomes. One can check who is citing her/his papers, or compute various citation metrics. In case the profile is public, the information is indexed by Google Search. Recently open access mandate was added.
In order to make good use of Google Scholar Profile, make sure that you visit your profile regularly and check potential mistakes in records.