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Scholarly Publishing

Author ID Comparisons

ORCID and Publons (formerly ResearcherID) are complementary author identifiers, and it can be useful for authors to have both IDs. ORCID is a resource-agnostic identifier. That is, is not affiliated with a particular database or other resource. ResearcherID is unique to Web of Science and helps with author-level metrics (ex. h-index). ORCID and Researcher ID can "talk" to each other. If you have an ORCID ID you can use it to populate your ResearcherID and vice versa. The chart below compares features of the two IDs.

 

 ORCID
(Open Researcher & Contributor ID)

Publons
(formerly ResearcherID)
What is it?

Persistent digital identifiers for researchers

 Free alphanumeric author identifier, online community and search system
Integrated with... Open, non-profit community effort that has partnered with multiple universities, commercial research organizations, national agencies, publishers and professional societies Web of Knowledge
Create your own profile?   Yes Yes
How do I add publications to my profile?

 Import from partner organizations, e.g. Web of Science, Scopus

Enter manually

Import from Web of Science, ORCID, or your bibliographic reference manager (e.g. EndNote or Mendeley)

Upload RIS file
Features

Add external identifiers, e.g. ResearcherID, Scopus Author Identifier

Link to other systems or profiles, e.g. Google Scholar, LinkedIn

You choose what information to make public

Provides citation metrics for Web of Knowledge publications

Registered and non-registered users can search for and view author profiles

Labs tools allow you to view your collaboration and citing article networks

You choose what information to make public
Best used for...

Managing research activities and author identifiers in one place

Grant and manuscript submissions: several publishers and funding organizations have implemented or are planning to implement ORCID

Organizing and tracking publications

Allows others to easily locate your publications in Web of Knowledge databases
Where can I get it? Register for free at ORCID Register for free at Publons

from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Health Sciences Library 

ORCID IDs

Distinguish Yourself in 3 Easy Steps

  1. Register - the form is simple and takes 30 seconds
  2. Add your information - enhance your ORCID record with professional information and link to other identififiers (ResearcherID, LinkedIN, etc)
  3. Use your ORCID ID -include your ORCID ID on web pages, when you submit publications, apply for grants, and in any research workflow to get credit for your work

Publishers/Journals Requiring ORCID IDs

More and more publishers/journals are requiring authors to have ORCID IDs.

  • Wiley
  • The Royal Society
  • Royal Society of Chemistry
  • American Chemical Society
  • Springer Nature
  • PLOS
  • EMBO Press
  • IEEE
  • Hindawi
  • Science Journals
  • ScienceOpen
  • Frontiers
  • JMIR Publications
  • Faculty of 1000
  • Military Technical Courier
  • Japan Epidemiological Association

Google Scholar Profile

Creating and controlling your Google Scholar profile will help ensure that Google Scholar will accurately groups your publications together.

Create a Profile

  1. Sign into your Google account on http://scholar.google.com
  2. The Citations sign up form will come up for you to confirm your name, your institution, etc.
  3. Google Scholar will show you a list of citations that it thinks might be yours. Add the articles that do belong to you.
  4. Once the articles are added, you will be asked if you want data changes to be applied automatically or if you wna to review beforehand. You may want to review in case Google Scholar tries to misattribute an article to you.
  5. Your profile is complete. You can choose to make your profile public or private, add co-authors, etc.

Author IDs and Profiles

Author ID systems are becoming more prevalent and used to help authors distinguish themselves and make sure that their work is appropriately attributed to them. Author ID systems help:

  • Distinguish authors with common/similar names
  • Unite publications for authors with name variations
    • Hyphenated, not hyphenated, hyphen submitted as a middle name, etc.
    • Name changes
    • Differences due to culture

Common author identifier systems include: ORCID, and ResearchedID.

 

Author Profile Sites

  UTMB Health Research Experts Google Scholar Citations Research Gate Academia.edu Mendeley
Overview

UTMB's research profile system.

View author or department level profiles

Profile is automatically created; profile can be edited by consulting with Research Services

 Profile Profile Profile Profile
Biography

No

 No, only affliations and research interests Yes Yes Yes
Publication List Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Linked Publications No Yes Possible Possible Yes
Adding (semi) automatic Yes, only articles indexed by Scopus are included Yes (not always accurate) PubMed, IEEE, Cite Seer, BMC Crossref, Microsoft AS, PubMed, ArVix Available via many search engines and when RIS or BibTeX files are available
Includes metrics Yes Yes Yes No traditional metrics but does show page and document views Yes, but metrics are only visible to the profile owner
Number of Users Unknown Unknown ~5m ~15.5m Over 2.5m

adapted from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Health Sciences Library