Any bibliometric tool relies on accurately identifying an author and their associated works. However, assigning credit to an author for their work is not a trivial process. Some bibliometric sources scrape authors from documents, others require claiming credit via their platform. Researchers change their names and their institutions, potentially leading to disconnects in their online presence among the different bibliometric sources. No tool will be entirely accurate, but researchers can do their part to ensure that the information entering the tool is as complete as possible.
One straightforward way of curating your author identity is to create an ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) iD (see below), a persistent digital identifier across all platforms that follows a researcher through their entire career.
There are several databases used in bibliometric research. To ensure a researcher’s impact is being correctly understood, it is important to curate a researcher’s profile on multiple platforms. Both programatic and manual curation methods are subject to error, but linking these sources with an ORCID iD can improve their accuracy.
The list below names some of the different databases used in bibliometric research and provides links to more details on how to curate a researcher profile in each.
The ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor IDentifier) iD is a persistent digital identifier that is used across a variety of bibliometric databases. When you register for an ORCID iD, it will create a unique sixteen-digit identifier and profile that will follow you through name or organization changes for your entire career.
This tutorial will walkthrough creating an ORCID iD and connecting it to various sources to unify your online research presence. The more unified your research presence is, the easier it is to calculate relevant bibliometrics like the H-index. A more detailed walkthrough can be found on the ORCID blog.
Create an ORCID iD at: https://orcid.org/register
Enter your first and last name.
Enter a primary email address.
Optionally enter secondary email addresses.
After clicking Next, you will be prompted to create a password.
Set your visibility settings. For more information on visibility settings, see ORCiD's blog post on the topic.
After registration, you can specify what the privacy settings are for each item in your profile.
If you have a common name, it is possible other researchers have a similar name. To prevent multiple ORCID iDs being created for one person, you may be asked to verify that you are not already registered.
Congratulations, you have created an ORCID iD!
It is possible, though rare, to have a duplicate ORCID iD. The goal of the ORCID iD is to have a single persistent digital identifier for a person to use across all platforms. The steps for removing a duplicate record are listed below, but for more information, please see ORCID's blog post on removing duplicates.
To deprecate a duplicate ORCID iD, log into the account you want to keep.
When a duplicate record is removed, the associated email address will be merged with the active ORCID iD account and all other information is deleted.
There are several fields within an ORCID Profile that a researcher should maintain. Among those are:
When a researcher submits new articles, books, theses, etc., they should include their ORCID iD so the information will be posted to their profile. A researcher should periodically check their profile (once a semester) to ensure that the information is accurate and current. By maintaining an accurate profile, researchers can reduce the overhead for calculating research impact metrics such as the h-index.
